I think sometimes it’s nice to be able to have something technical explained in non-technical terms, so that those people that are not so technically minded can start to understand the technical thing that is being explained… in a less technical way.

It almost always helps and I recently saw a difference in how I approach a situation compared to how somebody else would. Someone that had a completely different mindset and technical background – my Dad. Let me explain.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new car. Nothing new – in fact it’s just as old as the car that’s about to fail its MOT for the very last time, but it’s well looked after. It’s a retro little thing that I can’t wait to get onto the road at the end of this month and is perfect for the summer… if it actually happens this year, that is!

Anyway, my Dad came with me to see the car and take it for a drive as he knows cars much better than I do and he looks for things that I wouldn’t even think of checking. It was interesting – he checked everything… meticulously.

We put it through tests – speed bumps at 30mph, emergency stops, checking the soft roof didn’t leak, checking the modifications to see if we could work out the kind of driver that owned it previously. We even narrowed it down to ‘young’ and ‘female’. This kind of analysis was new to me when it came to buying a used car and was really interesting – enlightening, even.

It reminded me a lot of how I objectively look at sites that come into our department and the ones we look after every day to make sure they are going to perform as best as they can, which I know is very different to how a designer would look at a website and again very different to how a typical surfer would look at the same site.

It’s not a case of getting a website designed and hoping for the best (which I knew), just as you don’t buy a car and hope for the best (which I now know). It needs going over with a fine-toothed comb.

You check everything to make sure there are no small problems that could become major, expensive issues later down the line when you’ve sold your old car and don’t have anything else as a backup – or when your site goes live and you’re depending on it to bring in regular income so you’re not paying out of your own pocket while the site gains momentum and starts making a return.

You want both to work the best they possibly can so you get the most out of it with as few problems as possible. You want something that just ‘works’.

I consistently run sites through a myriad of different standards, checks and tools to ensure everything is as well-tuned and streamlined as possible to keep Google happy along with the visitors that it sends. Speed tests, diagnostics, effectiveness tests, trying different configurations… the list goes on.

I also always make small tweaks to the site itself to make sure it works as best as it can, whether it’s to aid the optimisation itself, to improve the load speed, to help a site convert better or tailor it to suit the audience they want to attract, just as a mechanic would set tappets and fine-tune the engine to perform work how they want it to perform – it’s best.

There are a lot of similarities… I could go on but I can imagine it getting pretty tedious. I think it’s nice to have a real-world example of something that relates to what we do that a less technical person can start to understand what we do and why we do it and what it compares to.

I know that through running such comprehensive tests and making ongoing tweaks to streamline a site and rule out as many potential problems as possible through meticulous analysis it will work well in the search engines and be great for visitors. As for the car… let’s just see how it goes once I get it on the road in March.

Ok, so your trusty SEO company has got you onto page 1 for your search phrase. Competitive or not, it’s an achievement that places you right in front of the eyes of people looking for your products and/or services and allows you to grab potential sales or leads from being visible in the right areas. But is Page 1 really considered a success?

For some campaigns, it definitely is a major achievement to get a competitive keyword onto page 1 – I have a few! But the campaign really doesn’t stop there.

Research from a study by Optify recently shows that almost 60% of people click on positions 1-3. Position 4 only sees 7.9% of clicks while position 10 gets a measly 2.2%. Positions 1 really is the place to be with 36.4% of all clicks.

With this information we know that to get the most of being on page one you really have push hard to be to be in position 1-3, although there are other attributes that may skew this information. Things such as video and image listings, or non-blended and blended places results.

It’s also worth noting that positions 1 on page 2 actually gets more clicks that the bottom of page 2.

The information was taken in December 2010 and based on the US version of Google‘s search results pages, analysing 250 randomly selected sites for keyword visits to sites within the B2C and B2B.

Optify noted that ranking beyond the top 20 results (2 pages) has almost no business value and concluded that that you won’t see “huge benefits until you get to the top few positions”.

From our perspective it shows that there are two distinct goals, particularly for bigger campaigns; one to get the site onto page 1 and another to work our way up page 1 to get to position 1-3. Do they have different strategies? Potentially.

It’s something that needs more thought and analysis but clearly there are two different – and easily measurable – goals and, although the overall goal is very similar, allows us to set smaller goals within this that can be tackled individually.

After all, if you’re consistently taking small baby steps one day you’ll look back and see that you’ve not just pottered forwards but you’ve actually taken a giant leap towards achieving a much larger goal!

A/B testing is a way of testing different versions of a site or a page to work out which one achieves a particular goal at a more effective rate, with a view to rolling out the version that performs better for good or for further A/B testing.

For example, a sites home page layout can be altered by including more or less images or text and the test could be to track which results in the user visiting the contact page or actually putting an enquiry through.

It’s best to make small changes to the version you are testing, rather than many, so you can track what works and what doesn’t. If you make too many changes and you see an improvement in goals being reached it is going to be almost impossible to attribute the success to any one thing in particular.

Some changes you should consider making to your site include:

• Making the phone numbers stand out more
• Including full contact details including physical address more prominently
• Including accepted payment methods
• Adding testimonials to the site
• Trying a cleaner, more modern website design or layout
• Adding a video presenter or slideshow to the site to introduce your product or service quickly
• Moving the sidebar to the other side of the page
• Making the main navigation menu system more prominent
• Displaying prices on your pages
• Comparing your prices to well-known brands of a similar industry

There are endless small tweaks you can make to the site that may help or hinder a sites conversion rate, but with a few tests run over a period of several months you can increase your sites success and potentially your business as a whole.

Do you know any celebrities? Have you thought about using them to help your search rankings? It’s a bit of an odd idea but I think it can actually work – and on several levels. Here’s why.

You’ve probably heard by now of people selling tweets or followers. For some time now celebrities have been generating additional income through this and – I’d imagine – to a fair bit of success.

Not only does the tweet get published to thousands – if not millions – of followers and can bring you many clicks and followers, it also acts as an endorsement from that celebrity. And I think that’s why so many people are turning to celebrities to push their brand or cause, whether it’s for charity or for financial gain through business.

We know that celebrity endorsement works – that’s why we see Michael Parkinson selling life insurance policies, George Clooney selling coffee machines and Davina McCall and Cheryl Cole advertising hair products on the television.

Taking this back into the online world, with Google Plus becoming more important as a social tool – as well as an SEO tool – getting high profile +1′s from authoritative celebrities is one way of publicising (or even initiating) endorsement quickly and encouraging people to click your site within the search results.

Let me explain. Those that are logged in while searching and have a Google Plus account will see which of the people they follow have +1′d your site. If that celebrity is one of those that are being followed this will appear in the search results next to your listing and the chances of click-through and potential sales potentially can increase massively.

Chosen wisely, the celeb will also have close ties to your industry and with a wide reach this could be a very powerful move for your online SEO campaign.

Not only that, but through the association between your business and the celebrity you might also see people publicly talking (via social media, forums and blogs) about the decision made by the famous face and it all contributes to creating buzz. In turn, this could quickly lead to links pointing to your website helping to push it up the search results.

Previously, a celebrity endorsement would be printed on leaflets and magazines and put on radio and television adverts and took time to be publicised, yet with social media it is almost instant and reaches out to those that are already ‘connected’ with the celebrity. And now that these +1′s appear within the search results, the connection is made obvious to those looking for products and services similar to what you provide – a connection that could work really well.

The idea is very quick and potentially very effective when it utilises social media, particularly powerful if there’s a good overlap between the celebrity and your audience and can be exploited as often as you like. It can also work for highly authoritative and well-known figures within your industry.

As for the cost… please contact your nearest celebrity.

Many businesses have realised that they need to be online in order to be seen by potential customers. With paper-based directories diminishing in size and with people becoming more mobile and being able to search on the move it is only getting more important to ensure you have a place online and are doing everything you can to be as visible as possible.

For those that are thinking of getting online or for those that want to push their online presence here are just a few tips that every small business owner should seriously consider if they are to be taken seriously in the online world.

Buy a Keyword Rich Domain

This isn’t the be all and end all with Google, but keyword rich domains tend to do much better. With a little bit of work and a well-made site you can soon find yourself at the top of Google.

If you owned a plumbers merchant in Leicester and you managed to grab plumbersmerchantsleicester.co.uk you’d be ideally placed to pull in some great quality traffic to the site and are probably one of the few URLs that people will remember instantly, give or take the exception of a few well-known brands.

Use WordPress

Most SEO companies will tell you that WordPress is a great platform for SEO. Easily customised, clean coding, constantly updated and search engines love it. Plus it’s easy to use and pretty much anyone can set it up.

If there’s one thing you do to your site to improve it, move it over to WordPress and you’d be doing yourself a huge favour. If you’re thinking of setting up a new site – make WordPress your first stop.

Blog Regularly

Following on from the last point, blogging regularly is key to showing the search engines that your site is up to date and relevant to visitors and it will be rewarded with more trust and better positions as a result. Google loves fresh content and it’ll be a matter of minutes before it’s running over to check out what’s new – it’s like waving a CurlyWurly in front of a chocoholic’s face.

Look to Your Suppliers

Have a brief chat with each of your suppliers or other industry leaders and see if they’ll place a link to your site. Not only does this help improve your site’s authority as a whole but will also help Google to see that you are a known and trusted resource – suppliers won’t link to just ‘anybody’, after all.

Although there are many other elements that help a website gain success online, these are some fundamental things you should look at to help establish your site online and can be used as a fantastic base to start a hard-hitting SEO campaign.