Last weeks blog we looked at 10 simple tips to get you started on your onsite SEO. If you are serious about SEO it would pay to make sure you understand all the points in last weeks blog. To move forward here are a few more suggestions:

• Make sure you use the links within your site to make use of your keywords. For example if your keyword is “SEO” then link to SEO, and not “to find out more about SEO click here”
• Following on from this, make sure you include title tags to your links. Title tags will appear when you hover your mouse over a link. Don’t spam these with keywords, but make them descriptive from a users perspective, for example “click here” wont mean anything to a user or search engines but if you have “to find out more read our SEO blog” with a title tag of “search engine optimisation blog” you give the link more value.
• While we are on links, check that your homepage links throughout your site link back only to the domain and not www.yourdomain.co.uk/index.php. If your external links are pointing to www..yourdomain.co.uk and your internal links point to /index.php you are splitting your links and they are therefore not effective.
• If you have a new site it can often take some time to get indexed through submission to Google. If you can get a link from another good quality site it is likely you will get indexed much quicker.
• Make sure your site is easy to use, navigation reflects the pages it points to, links are easily identifiable from regular text, and that they are easy to click.
• Alt tags for images are there for the visually impaired, they wont be able to see the image, but a screen reader will be able to pick up what the alt tags say, allowing the user to make sense of the site. If you images are relevant for your site then you can make use of them for SEO but don’t abuse them, a brief descriptive alt tag in your coding will mean you image will get indexed by search engines and serve it’s intended purpose.
• We create sitemaps for users, and for search engines we need to create an XML sitemap. To learn more have a look at James and Nick’s video blog.
• My last tip of the day is utilise Google’s wonderwheel for long tail keywords you can integrate into your copy and blog posts. This will give you some ideas of what Google considers relevant to your selected keywords, and support your content.

If I have missed anything please let me know, I’m sure my colleagues will be able to point out a vital element they think I have over looked. If you can get to grips with my last two blogs you have set your self up with the basics to get started. Make yourself a check list, and tick things off as you work your way through, that way you always have something to refer back on and reflect on room for improvement.

They key to online success is to identify your goals and objectives. Many clients believe the success of their campaign is measured by how many page 1 number 1 listings they have in the search engine results. There is no denying that rankings are a vital element in SEO success, they should not be your main goal, it may or may not be true that you could be missing out on visitors for not being page 1 number 1, but it is important to realise that rankings will not make sales, and that different rankings will produce different bounce rates.

For example if you look at buyer behavior, it consists of needs or wants (in my case it is usually a want) a period of research, to see what if on offer to fulfill that need or want, and then the act of purchasing. From personal experience I will browse the first, sometimes the second page and then re-visit the site that most suited my requirements. The point I’m making is that although a good ranking might bring more in through the door at position 1, they might not be as ready to buy as those at who come in the door at position 5.

Goal Setting and Monitoring

• Visitors: Again a common misconception, once you start performing for your keywords you will notice a rise in visitors to your site. Without being negative its not quite time to declare victory just yet, and my next point will lead on from this. If the visitors you are receiving are not converting, you are going to have to have a good look at changing the direction of your focus, it could be identifying new keywords, re-assessing your products, updating your website, you will need to identify where the problem lies and work on improving this. Monitoring visitors is very useful, but its not a numbers game and should not be your main goal.
• Conversions: In my opinion this should be your ultimate goal, this is the biggie! SEO is more than just rankings and visitors and I cant stress this enough. It is vital that before progressing forward with your plans for world domination, you define these goals to your web designer and SEO consultant, or if undertaking a solo mission; yourself. A conversion will be personal to your business, for an online shop it will be people making a purchase, if you are a blog it might be how many people leave you a comment, it could be a new follower on facebook or twitter. Without understanding and defining these goals you will have no way of monitoring your success or return on investment.

Can you track your conversions?

Installing analytic tracking on your website is a must for you to be able monitor your goals and objectives. Some of the most basic data you will need to get to grips with are the amount of traffic (visitors) your site receives, where these visitors are coming from (traffic sources) and how they are finding you, how the visitors use your site and bounce rates, and identify the best method for monitoring conversion rates personal to your goals. Rebecca wrote a post last week about how webmaster tools can help you can develop your SEO, and Nick’s video blog is a good place to start for installing analytic tracking to your site.

We all know SEO is evolving, with Google rolling out personalised searches, and anytime search results, meaning not all users will see the same 10 results dependent on their settings. What does this mean for SEO… well, you can no longer quantify a successful SEO campaign based on the highest listings in Google. You will need to identify goals and then the data needed to prove the success of the goals you have chosen.

Improve your SEO with Webmaster Tools.

Like many other free google tools, webmaster tools is an easy to use and effective method you should use to help your SEO. Its will assist you to achieve that page 1 position for your website. Discover how webmaster tools will give you ideas of how you can develop certain areas of your website to improve its performance in the SERPS.

One of the purposes of your internet marketing, is optimizing your site to ensure it gets as many clicks as possible to bring visitors to your site. Learn crucial aspects of webmaster tools and enhance your site to maximise its performance and maximise your conversions.

One of the first things your should do in webmaster tools is submit your XML site map into the sitemaps section under site configuration, as this informs google of all the URLs in your site that need crawling. Once submitted, it will tell you how many of your pages have been submitted, against how many have been indexed and can be found within the search engines. Its an interested aspect of webmaster tools, as it highlights which pages haven’t been indexed so you can take action and look at the architecture of these pages to see if they can be improved to get indexed also, which will improve your SEO.

Check the settings section and ensure that your sites geographic target, matches the country your site is based in. This is particularly helpful when you have a .com or other domain name type which doesn’t indicate the country like .co.uk would. This tells google exactly the location you wish to be primarily associated with and ensures that Google takes your site into consideration for the geographical location that you require when positioning you in the search engines.

See your results in the webmaster tools “your site on the web” section. This is where the best information in terms of value to your SEO keywords is found. Its knowing how to interpret it that is the important part.

The top search queries section is a proven tool for SEO as it shows you all the searches you show up for, in addition to the ones you expect to from your optimisation. It gives you effective insight into how many impressions you site has made under each keyword. There may be some here that you don’t currently optimise for which will give you ideas for new potential keywords. Looking at the average position column you can see if there are any on page 2 that if optimised to get it onto page 1 could bring you more conversions.

These results also show you how many clicks your site has received through each keyword and the click through rates (CTR). CTR’s are the percentages that your site has been clicked on depending on what position it is in the search engines. If you are position 4 and have X amount of impressions for a certain keyword then webmaster tools will tell you what percentage of them impressions resulted in someone actually clicking on your site in the search engines.

This information gets more interesting when you click on the keyword it will show you the difference of what percent your site would get clicked on if it was position 1-3, enabling you to gain insight and take control of what is the minimum position your site needs to be in to reach its maximum potential of visits from the search engine.

You may be at the bottom of page 1 and feel content with that and feel that’s enough for your site to perform but if you then looked at the click through rate for that keyword in webmaster tools, you may see that trends found from google for this keyword is that people predominately only click the top 3 sites then you realise that to receive the rewards deserved, the bottom of page 1 isn’t good enough and that you need to do that extra bit of work on your SEO to help your website reach its potential.

The diagnostics tab within google webmaster tools will enable you to have your site checked for Malware and Crawl Errors. It will show any broken links within your site and any external links that are pointing to a page that doesn’t exist. These errors will effect your SEO and need to be fixed.

In the labs section your can go into site performance to see data on your websites page download speeds. This has become more important and is now being taken into consideration by search engine algorithms . Webmaster tools provides data which enables you to compare the download speeds from month to month of each individual URL within your site. This can help you to understand if changes you have made to content have resulted in slower page download speeds which in turn could effect your page ranking.

The data also informs you of whether your site downloads slower or faster than your main competition which can answer certain SEO queries you may have about your sites performance in the search engines.

The help offered by webmaster tools for your SEO doesn’t end with just telling you if your page loads too slowly, you can click on the individual results where it then offers you information on each URL and how the download time can be made faster to help you compete better with your competitors in the search engines.

There are other aspects to webmaster tools but these are the main ones that will easily guide you into taking control of your website and its potential in the search engines. Take action and try looking at you site with these effective methods and see an improvement in your websites results.

How internet marketing can use Google Maps to improve local SEO.

Local businesses who want to generate more business to their website with internet marketing, will see the impact that a Google Map will have for getting your business noticed online.

Spending some time to work on your Google map will bring you page 1 benefits even if page 1 hasn’t yet been achieved organically with your SEO . If your site is already on page 1 then being up there with the map listing can  make your business profile look stronger to potential customers.

Google maps produces a map with single line business listings which often comes above the first page 1 position 1 organic listing.

Build your business listing with Google maps by going to Google Places (formally known as Local Business Centre) and create an account.

• http://www.google.co.uk/places

Take action and complete all the sections within this, adding a keyword rich (but not spammy) description, opening hours, images and payment methods. Ensure that you complete all 5 category options to maximise your listing potential. The more accurate you can be with your categories the better your success will be. Using categories from the list of suggestions is recommended but its OK to add one of your own if they don’t suggest an appropriate one. Try to make sure your profile here is 100% complete.

Ensure you complete the Google Maps listing to contain the same business name, address and telephone numbers as what appears on the website itself.

Google wont allow you to create a different listing for different locations that your business serves so ensure that your add these in using the list of area’s served selection. As you can see from the image below this maximises the area of the map Google will connect your business with but don’t abuse this option, keep it realistic for it to work properly.

Make sure you enhance your place page by adding as many of the available media options such as images and video as possible and if applicable, create coupons or add weekly specials. The more information you can give google the better they can list you.

Filling this information in is just the start. If your industry is not very competitive then you may be lucky enough to be amongst the listings right from filling in this listing alone but more competitive industries and areas will require a little more work. ( Although this is actually also recommended to keep your listing on the search engine maps and strengthen your listing).

There are many other ways you can improve the position of your google map and one of these ways is getting happy clients / customers to write testimonial style reviews for you in the review section of your listing, as these boost your map profile.

Listing yourself with local directories for the town of your Google map address will increase your location profile, reinforcing the strength of your listing. You can find these in Google by simply typing into the search “Nottingham directories” for example.

All directories that enable you to verify your location with a Google map within them are an excellent way to promote your google map.

These listings are often different to your standard link building and more like the Google places listings, as many of these sites don’t produce a quality SEO link as such but they produce citations of your business that usually come high in the search engines.

These citations result in the directories themselves coming up in the listing of Google but with your business information. Although these don’t produce great SEO benefits to your sites set keyword organic rankings, it does have the benefits of increasing your Google map position and helps it to get it with the top few we see in the search engine lists.

A selection of good places to build these citations is:

• http://www.Qype.co.uk
• http://www.hotfrog.co.uk
• http://www.brownbook.net

These are just to get you started, there are many more across the internet.

This integrated with your local internet marketing campaign is a way to ensure that you utilise all the most productive methods available to make your website and business a success.

Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

With the current economic climate it’s important for small businesses to understand the best ways to market themselves out of the recession and not to waste money on marketing that doesn’t work.

Getting an Internet marketing service and a professional website is the direction many businesses are going in. Putting together a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign to go along with the website will be the best investment that can be made in terms of modern business promotion.

Being able to understand that current trends in the buying process have changed and that consumers are more cautious about their purchases is important for business owners. When writing your business marketing strategies this will help when deciding where best to invest your finances.

Marketing your business on the internet gives the customer the option, via your website, to find out more about your business and its products and services before making contact and committing to buy. Giving this knowledge to customers gives them trust in your business and results in more confident sales and returning customers. This is something that can be difficult to achieve by distributing flyers and small adverts.

The production of flyers and distributing them locally has increasingly been found not to generate a good return on your investment and the adverts in local papers or advert magazines don’t work for many businesses.

Many types of small business marketing methods don’t directly target your intended market, but tend to target everyone in that area at the hope that the right people read your ad. This method wastes a lot of money with a large proportion of flyers being thrown in to the bin and adverts not being read.

Using an Internet Marketing Service to get your business to the first page in search engines such as Google, takes away all the problems of flyers and small adverts and provides a long term solution that can be continually developed over time. An Internet marking service is not just for the larger businesses. Many of my clients are small business owners who are targeting a local audience to provide their services to. The well promoted website provides their business with a professional image and lots of information for their customers.

With a internet marketing campaign your marketing is centred around choosing specific keywords that you would expect potential customers to type into search engines to find your business. These keywords are important and the inclusion of your local area within that keyword is vital as so many people will type what they want followed by the area into search engines i.e. Plumber Bristol.

With a huge rise in the amount of people searching online for products and services all small businesses would benefit from this kind of marketing.

The SEO is just a small part of of what an internet marketing provides and the inclusion of email marketing to your clients can be used to keep them updated with offers and promotions.

An internet marketing service can also provide you with article marketing, writing and distributing articles about your business across the internet. This allows you to reach more potential clients at a lower cost to you. Each article added will also be providing links back to your site to strengthen its position in the search engines.

With so many businesses moving their marketing this way its important for small businesses to keep up with the trends and move to internet marketing too.