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.

With famous faces such as Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver and even Manchester United footballer Rio Ferdinand opening restaurants across the country, what does it take to create the perfect menu?

It’s a difficult task with so many delicious foods to choose from and it’s the same in SEO; let’s see if we can create the perfect SEO menu to boost your campaign.

Starter

This part of the meal is all about setting the scene, so think carefully about presentation as it allows your diners to create an early impression of what you are trying to achieve.

There’s no such thing as the perfect starter as everyone is individual and will like different things. However, one way to play it safe is a fresh fruit salad packed full of delicious flavours; using ingredients sourced from across the world, you can inject a host of tastes into your dish to set your diners’ taste buds alight.

Your website is the first impression your customer will get of your business and just like a starter, it should portray the right message. Should you suffer from bad web design, users won’t stay on your site for long and instead will head to your competitors.

Main Course

The main course should be a wholesome dish full of fresh and seasonal ingredients. You can show off your skills and add flair with creative cooking but don’t go crazy as sometimes less is more, so keep it simple. Whether you are cooking a British favourite like stew or an Italian pasta dish, you should ensure that you are prepared and have a well-stocked kitchen before starting.

Google changes their algorithms regularly and this is where you need to keep up to date with the changes in search engine optimisation. One aspect of SEO that Google is putting a higher priority on recently is Social Media signals; this is where you can get creative by managing Facebook or Twitter accounts for your business and increase your brand image with your customers.

Dessert

This is the last dish your diners will taste so you need to make it memorable and make sure it is in keeping with the rest of your menu. If you have a theme, don’t be lead astray because you want to create your favourite chocolate dessert. If you’re sticking traditional and making a delicious cake, make sure you try it out before putting it on your menu to ensure the ingredients infuse well together. Most importantly you need to create a strong dessert to end your meal on a good note.

As you would test and try ingredients to create the perfect cake, consider using specific programmes to determine the best keywords to optimise for in your campaign. By having a strong end to your meal, you will make your message clear and concise just as you would ensure your call to action is clear. Furthermore, don’t go mad adding lots of different ingredients; instead, give each page of your site a clear focus and optimise for just a few specific keywords instead of several that won’t bring in the amount of traffic you are hoping for.

Whether creating an SEO menu or venturing into the world of food, you should have a clear understanding of who your audience is and what they will find appealing. Finally, and most importantly, keep up to date with the latest trends in both industries to ensure the best results at all times!

To be in the Content Team, you need to be a whiz with words, a pro at proofreading and a guru of grammar, and we’re looking for people with a passion for writing to join us here at Creare.

Following on from the success of last year, we’ll be expanding even further, and we’re looking for some fresh new faces to work within the Content Team to help provide our clients with a service that is second to none.

So, what does the Content Team do?

Well, we like to think of ourselves as an essential cog within the SEO department, providing good quality content such as blog posts, press releases and much more! Currently, we’re made up of two teams  all working closely together and are looking for the right people to expand the team even further.

We welcome all applications, but the ideal candidate would be an English/Journalism graduate with a real passion and enthusiasm for writing and/or online marketing.

If you think this sounds like you, then please send your CV to jenny@creare.co.uk.

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

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.

As my first official blog of the year, and with the Christmas break out of the way, I thought I’d turn the tables on the tradition of looking to the future at New Year, and look back to 2011. More specifically, I want to take a quick look at the predictions we made at the start of the year in this blog, regarding which way SEO was headed. Hopefully, but doing this we’ll be able to learn something/pat ourselves on the corporate back (delete as appropriate).

So the first prediction in the list on the list was:

1.    Better Google Algorithm
With this first prediction, it may look to you like we were hedging our bets a little by being deliberately vague. However if you delve a little deeper and see our explanation you’ll notice that we talk a little about the likelihood that Google would take bold steps to improve its algorithm and reduce the prevalence of content farms.

Well, with the introduction of the now infamous Panda update of February 2011, we weren’t far off the money. Panda reduced the rankings of sites relying on poor quality content and duplicated content. More than this, with continued updates throughout 2011, Google cemented its goal of hammering content farms for the good of the end user.

2.    Stricter Guidelines on Google Products
Again, we were pretty spot on with this one. Anyone who’s using Google’s Merchant Centre at present will no doubt be aware that in 2011 Google rolled out a raft of much more stringent requirements for successfully product listing. These included stricter guidelines on unique product identifiers and the need to update products more regularly so that information was up to date.

If these measures aren’t met then you could find your site’s account being suspended altogether. Visit our Ecommerce arm or type Google Merchant into the search bar for help with product listings for 2012.

3.    More New Google Products
Ok so maybe this one wasn’t quite so accurate. We predicted that Google Offers, which was tipped for release in 2011 would quickly become a big contender for online deals, rivalling Groupon by the end of the year. The latter services’ media controversies notwithstanding, Google Offers had a minimal if not completely nonexistent effect on SEO in 2011. Tellingly, the service is still in its beta stage and is only available to localised users in the USA.

I don’t think that the service will grow much more in the first part of 2012. With the popularity of Google places and the number of users it generates, I think most SEOs will continue to rely on this to boost their regional and local campaigns, rather than Groupon or Google offers.

Moving Forward

So two out of three isn’t bad and demonstrates how the seemingly chaotic progression of search and SEO can be predicted with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

What does this mean for your SEO campaigns? Well, it should show business owners that if they’re conducting their campaigns themselves, they need to keep themselves abreast of relevant industry news.

As SEO consultants, part of our jobs in innovating and researching to make sure Creare remain at the top of our game. With this in mind, keep checking back for tips, tricks and predictions regarding how best to optimise your sites in 2012.