Search Engine Optimisation

To win with the Search Engines, first make the most of what you've got

Search Engines are just like any other of your visitors, they love content. Preferably well written, preferably with original insight and preferably laid out in such a way that it is easy to comprehend, and the more of it there is the happier they become. Often the first steps in any Search Engine Optimisation campaign is to assess what content is already on the site, and to work out how to make it more attractive and meaningful to Search Engines.

Appropriate Solutions have years of experience of analysing websites to find the hidden gems or clear the unnoticed problems that may help to make a difference to your Search marketing campaign. Contact Appropriate Solutions if you would like us to look over your website and give you an honest assessment of your potential.

Choose your targets and make them achievable

The first step in any campaign, whether Search Engine related or not, is to choose suitable targets. In a Search Marketing campaign these tend to be based around the words and phrases you hope to be found for within Search Engine Results Pages. These need to be:

Realistic. They must be capable of being reached given your current position and the resources you can apply to the campaign.
Suitable. The words should be applicable to your products or services and should be tied to your business goals.
Valuable. The words must bring enough visitors of sufficient individual value that they will bring a positive financial or strategic reward to the business.

This often ties in well with the SMART methodology of goal planning in business (goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time lined) and avoids wasted resources chasing high traffic words which the website is currently unable to reach, or pursuing high numbers of low value words which are unlikely to bring much value to the business.

Play to your strengths and use what you have

Unless your website is still in the planning stage (in which case why not ask a company that understands search to help you build it?), the chances are you will already have some content. This content may well be a valuable asset that is simply under performing, and with a few simple changes can be optimised to get the most out of it. Once organised and arranged so that it plays to it's strengths, it will allow the Search Engines to index your content in a more positive light, using each piece of content to stress to the Search Engines what it's main topic is and defining certain pages as being the key page for the search terms you are pursuing (so called Landing Pages).

Whatever your business area, if you are reasonably successful in it, it must mean you have an understanding of your market and the problems and solutions that your visitors are wrestling with. This inside knowledge is an extremely valuable tool when focused on the right areas. Once you know how your potential visitors phrase their problems, you can start to answer their questions, providing them with the insight they want and at the same time building your reputation as a resource for informed answers within your market.

Snowballs and low hanging fruit - what the..?

By making the most of what you have you can start to make an appearance on Search Engine Results pages for some of your easier terms (the low hanging fruit), this will bring you more visitors and so increase your audience. By putting your content in front of a larger audience you increase the chance of some of your visitors enjoying your content or finding it valuable to them, this then improves the likelihood that some of them who also create web content may link back to you from their own websites. This natural linkage will over time build the reputation of your site with the Search Engines, positioning your pages higher up the Search Engine Results Pages and creating a virtuous circle of activity that will help you to get others to promote your website (the snowball, see there was a connection).

Your first steps on this journey

All this activity starts with an assessment of what your potential is and what your targets should be. Without this you may simply be keeping busy without being productive. If you would like us to help you assess your potential for your market then contact Appropriate Solutions for an informal discussion and to see what you could achieve.

Better Search Ranking Positioning through quality content

Behind the mind of Google, or why content matters.

"Drive thousands of visitors to your web site now!!!"

I love these ads. Another one is "Submit your web site automatically to hundreds of Directories with a single click". or "We guarantee to get your site to the top of Google!". I like to put them in with the ads found in the back of Sunday supplements promising cures for baldness, easy weight loss or get rich quick.

The Devil, as always is in the detail

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they will do what they say (OK, maybe not the cure for baldness), but it's the ambiguity that concerns me. After all driving thousands of visitors to your site is not that hard. A few ads along the line of "Free Money" or "Live Sex" should do the trick. But are they the visitors you want? Will they buy your product (if you're a money launderer or pornographer, quite possibly)? will they come back? If not then they are simply taking up your server time, ramping up your bandwidth bills and quite possibly costing YOU money.

So if you need a few more of the right sort of visitor what do you do? Well first of all you need a simple home truth;

Google does not care about Website Owners

Shocking isn't it? After all the hard work you put into your site, there is no sign of any appreciation. In fact due to what is called the Google Sandbox effect, Google may even penalise your site for being new.

The reason is simple, Google, and most other major Search Engines, knows it must satisfy the needs of those who seek content rather than those who provide content. Ultimately Google must provide its users with the most relevant, most appropriate, best quality content as easily and efficiently as possible. By doing so they increase the chances of the visitor returning and using their services again and so importantly encountering some of their contextual advertising, as it is this contextual advertising (the text ads you see down the right hand of the search results) that provides Google and the the other Search Engines with the majority of their revenue. If they do not satisfy their visitors enquiries, then these visitors will go elsewhere and the value of the advertising space their services carry will diminish.

So what does this mean to web site owners who want to position well with Google? Well first it means many of the so called 'Black Hat' Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques will ultimately be self defeating. these techniques centre around fooling Search Engines into believing your site to be of higher search value than it actually is. Previously these practices were quite blunt in their approach, but have become more subtle and can include practices such as:

Keyword Stuffing - adding a high density of your chosen keywords into the page content almost to the point of making the page unreadable.

Content Farming - generating high quantities of low quality content, this practice was targeted by a specific change to the Google Algorithm recently called the Panda Update

Link Spam - creating links often in the comments sections of Blogs or in Forum posts that point back to a website using the keywords of choice, or alternatively exchanging links with websites of little contextual interest to your visitors. These are now being targeted by Google who is encouraging website owners to report low quality links for investigation.

However it is the Search Engines job to deliver good relevant search results, so they will root out sites using such techniques and 'punish' them with either exclusion or by downgrading their ranking. This results in a SEO Arms Race with the Black Hat SEO companies trying to outwit the Search Engines and the Search Engines trying to catch the Black Hat SEO techniques.

A more sustainable, realistic approach to SEO is based on appropriate keywords within content of genuine worth.

In other words find the keywords that are right for you, then place them well within original, interesting content that others will want to link to. Finally let others know about your content so they can link to it. It's that simple. Unfortunately it does involve both hard work writing the content as well as insight into the topic the content is about. However if like many of our clients you are already knowledgeable in your area, this approach allows you to take advantage of your hard won insight.

Google may not care about you as a site owner, but it is interested in your content and wants to efficiently provide access to it. So give it what it wants, content. Fresh, interesting, relevant, quirky quite possibly, but lots of it. Let the Search Engines discern a theme to your content. If your in the widget business, then get appropriate widget centric words into your content, your headings, your titles, your links. When people link to your pages make sure they use your widgety words in the links. Be as consistent as possible, and eventually the Search Engines will get the message.

Search Engines are simple souls, it doesn't take much to get inside their minds. So just give them what they want, and they'll respond in kind. If you think your own insider knowledge is not getting the appreciation it deserves, why not contact Appropriate Solutions to see if we can help you make the most of it.

Web Site Promotion and Keyword Positioning

Location, location, location.

The geography of the Internet is words. They define its peaks and valleys, the desirability of the neighbourhoods and therefore the real estate values. While some words or phrases are the Oxford Street of the Internet, others are more akin to a back street of a provincial town. We look at how a Search Marketing strategy applies in the same way as finding your perfect retail location, take it away Kirstie and Phil...

Six simple methods to build visitor trust

The Two Step Sale.

As any good sales person will tell you, before you can sell something, you must first sell yourself. People are not going to spend their money with people they do not trust, no matter how shiny your web site looks. It's one of the fundamentals of marketing, we all like to see ourselves as "the brand you can trust".

Trust is a valuable commodity on the Internet. In bricks and mortar business we can meet someone we hope to do business with, shake their hand, look them in the eye, visit their shop or office, meet other members of their staff, speak to others about their reputation, all of these help to build trust. So how do we do this on-line?

Are Meta Keywords used by Search Engines?

When we discuss Search Engine Optimisation strategies with clients, we tend to find that a mixture of myths and 'old truths' still persist in the minds of many business owners with an on-line presence. It can often be embarrassing to have to point out the flaws in some of the ideas that our clients have regarding how Search Engine Optimisation works, so to avoid any future confusion, we decided to put together our Top 10 Myths about Search Engine Optimisation. We'll be releasing these as a series of articles as each one justifies some discussion on it's own, rather than a simple list, once we complete the series we'll release an index article so you can bookmark the resource for future reference.

Appropriate Solutions