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.

If you are just starting out in the world of internet marketing there are 5 important questions you need to answer before outsourcing your SEO. It is important to have clear objectives in mind to support your businesses growth online.

• Who: Who are you targeting and what problems does this buyer have?
• What: What problems are you solving for your target market? Why are they buying from you?
• What actions would you like your buyers to take, enquire, buy, order?
• Why: Why would they chose you? Why are you different from your competitors? Can you provide proof, testimonials, guarantees, industry specific qualifications for credibility?
• Where: Where would you like to market your business, organic listings, PPC, Facebook, Twitter?
• How: How will your site reflect your companies ethos/ personality? What kind of look and feel do you want to portray to clients? How will you communicate this, e.g what type of language will you use, corporate, humerus, industry specific, casual… ? How will they find you, what keywords do you think reflect your business that clients will search for? What other marketing tactics do you think would work for your company, blogging, Twitter, newsletters etc?

If your company does not have clear goals, well defined research and product development detailing exactly what people want it doesn’t matter how successful your SEO is. As with any aspect of business you need to provide something people want, if you don’t fully comprehend what that is no amount of SEO will be able to patch that gap.

As a business, in order to find success online it is important to have a fully functional website.

Firstly, it should tell customers exactly what your company does and secondly, it should show them exactly how they could purchase your products and services online.
It is also essential that you are aware of how you can market your site effectively, making it visible to your customers in the search engines.

Online developments, particularly in relation to search engines such as Google, have meant that there is now a wide range of ways that businesses can implement a successful marketing campaign, using a variety of techniques.

Through Google’s Universal Search, consumers can search using particular specifications including, videos, articles, reviews and forums. This could potentially attract a wider audience to your site, boosting ranking in the search engines and increase your companies business.

Creating videos about your business or related to the services that you offer, not only enables you to target a wider audience but it also offers a more personal, user-friendly service for the user.

Employing an SEO strategy to your site is one way of increasing its’ traffic, professional online marketing agencies could offer the best advice as to how you can get yourself noticed online.

I often wonder at the marketing skills of technical optimisers and do we (the optimisers) get caught up too heavily the listing and not look at a customers site objectively enough? Within the Creare SEO department we implement all sorts of techniques to ensure all aspects are addressed and i believe that some people are naturally better at this than others.

I also believe that PPC click campaigns allows optimisers to take and step back and look at such important factors in terms of conversion rate and making sure that the site provides the user experience required. At Creare any issues regarding this are minimised and this is why;

Creare specialise  in marketing, web design and SEO which means that we have the required skill sets to offer a fantastic service for all out customers whatever your industry.

As in previous posts, we are going to look at positive strategies for increasing traffic to your web site. In this brief article we will look at the areas of concern and the separate sections of your web site which need to be optimised.

* In site Optimisation
* External Backward Links
* RSS Feeds
* News Articles
* Forums

- In Site Optimisation -

1. This area covers internal key phrase rich links to pages within your web site, you should link key phrases to the page your working on, a related product page, external related sites and contact pages.
2. Headings are also important and should replicate you page title almost, Only one H1 tag on each site is also important.
3. Meta Tags (description, Keywords) should be individual for each optimised page and removed from un-optimised pages.
4. The content within you site is highly important and remember that ‘content is king’.
5. Layout out within sites is also very important, use div classes if possible and replace images with classes where possible.

- External Backward Links -

1. Create Key phrase rich backward links from your customers as you probably have control on the phrases returned more than ever.
2. Directory sites, whether this be in a general directory site or one specific to your industry.
3. Related sites – this could be a product manufacture that your company supplies, they usually have larger PR and will be glad to have a distribution center for their products linked on their site.

- RSS Feeds -

1. RSS feeds offer the chance for interested users to subscribe to the content that you post on your web site.
2. Also provides search engine friendly articles that can be traced back to your site.
3. Give the user something worth reading and they will read it, again content is king, if they like what they read then they will return time after time.

- Forums -

1. Forums are a great way of sharing industry news, with colleges and other industry buffs.
2. A way for starters in an industry to ask questions of the professionals and also gives a sense of realisum for the web site user, not just a robot.

Search Engine optimisation & search engine marketing by First Search SEO