Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
Written on July 28, 2010
This is another useful article that NECSES Webdesign has found for our visitors benefit.
Why SEO Is Like a Seed by Nick Stamoulis
SEO is not something that happens right away. For most people they have learned to understand that search engine optimization takes time and you need apply good quality approach in order to make an impact on your targeted industry search results.
Here are some reasons why SEO takes time for those who are not so convinced:
Limited Space: For every keyword and phrase there are only ten parking spaces in the search results which means that you need to put in the leg work to be visible in these areas. If everyone did a little SEO wouldn’t it be impossible to have everyone rank in the search results for a specific word or phrase?
Competition: You really don’t know what your competition is doing as far as marketing to be ranking in those search results. You can search around and take a look but ultimately you don’t really know what types of link building activities they are performing for them to show up in those areas.
Ranking Factors: There are close to 200 different ranking factors that determine where a website ranks. It takes time for a website to cover many of these factors which is why SEO is a long term effort.
Age: If you are in an industry where the majority of the websites that rank on page one or two are aged, meaning they have been live online for a much greater time than yours it will require even more patience and time. Age is a very important ranking factor in the search engines so if you have just recently launched your website it is going to take some time to really catch up to your competition.
Volume of Business: The internet has allowed people to start businesses relatively easy which means that content and websites are being dumped into the web space at much higher rate than ever before. The volume of content that exists in the internet is astonishing and it is not slowing down any time soon.
Don’t compare the rankings you might have achieved years ago to now because the game has shifted and changed quite a bit.
SEO was once a much different effort. Several years ago, before social media marketing was effective, a company had to rely solely on SEO for their marketing efforts. The effort has changed and forced businesses to take a much stronger SEO marketing and branding approach in order to stand out from the crowd.
Written on July 22, 2010
Every now and then we come across a news article that is very relevant to our clients needs, and below is such an article from Chris Hopkins
Easy Ways to Improve Search Engine Ranking and Drive Traffic
By Chris Hopkins (c) 2010
To learn how to improve search engine rankings and drive website traffic you need to understand the concepts that govern the way the search engines work.
Without an understanding of these principles and a system to incorporate them into everything you do online, you will not get the success you are seeking.
On the other hand, learn how to effectively utilize them and you will start dominating niches all over the Internet driving 1000′s of visitors to your site on a daily basis.
So what are the principles that rule search engine rankings and how do I improve mine? Here they are:
1. Relevancy
2. Popularity
3. Originality
Relevancy
Relevancy is something defined as having relationship to. For example if your website was about golf, related content would include information about such things as golf clubs, golf courses and golf lessons.
Content about anything other than the topic of the website or related topics would not score for relevancy, thereby having no chance of ranking in the search engines. Search engines check your site for relevancy.
You need to be right on topic for whatever it is you are targeting with the content you create. A final word of caution about relevancy: Relevancy alone will not rank your site. You could have the most highly relevant, best original content ever written posted at your site, however if there are no sites pointing to it, it will not rank in the search engines. Relevancy does not work without the concepts of popularity and original content.
The first step is to choose the keyword or keyword phrase you want your content to target. Let’s say you’re trying to get a higher ranking for this keyword phrase, the topic I am currently writing about, “Improve Search Engine Ranking”. First, you would want to find what people are searching for and specifically target that keyword if you want your content to rank for that phrase.
Make sure you include the keyword phrase in the title of the article. For example, your title could be “Strategies To Improve Search Engine Ranking”. Always try to put the keyword or keyword phrase as the first few words of the article title. Always remember to use the keyword phrase, several times throughout the article. Finally make sure your content remains 100% relevant to the keyword phrase.
Popularity
Popularity works together with relevancy to improve search engine rankings. Popularity is based on two key measures:
1. How Many Sites Link to Your Site
A site’s popularity is measured first by the number of sites that directly link to your site.
To demonstrate popularity let’s take a quick look at YouTube. YouTube is one of the most popular sites on the Internet, Why? All links and embed codes taken from YouTube and embedded on other sites, whether on Facebook, Myspace, a blog, a sales page or a website, create automatic links back to YouTube where the video is hosted. Every time someone shares a YouTube video a link is created.
With the number of videos shared, Youtube gets 1000′s of new incoming links daily. This is one of the reasons why YouTube videos rank very highly on the search engines. Their site is super popular.
2. The Popularity of the Sites Linking to You
The more popular the site linking to you is, the better the score given by the search engines.
The more incoming links to your site the more popular it is. It is therefore always important to syndicate the content of your site (with a direct link to the content on your site), to as many sites as possible. The Internet presents a host of sites where you can post your content for free to improve your search engine rankings, including popular high ranking sites like article directories, blogs, social bookmarking sites, video sites, press release and social network pages.
Originality
Originality basically refers to unique content. In simple terms the search engines ask the question, is this same piece of content all over the Internet? As an example, if I took a highly relevant and popular article from my site and posted it to hundreds of sites it would not rank high in the search engines as it would no longer be deemed unique.
There is no doubt that spreading your unique content across the Internet is important for driving traffic to your site. The secret is to make several unique versions of the same information all with a backlink to your original article posted on your site. Spinning is a popular term used to describe the process of changing the titles, key words and phrases throughout your article to make several unique versions. Placing these all over the Internet with a back link to your site will improve rankings.
Follow the steps above and I promise you will see an improvement in the number of visitors to your site.
Written on July 14, 2010
Euro Food Machinery Ltd are one the major suppliers of food processing machinery and equipment in the UK and they required a website design that reflected their high, professional standards of service. Our design was clean, with colours that relate to the company’s image whilst the site is easy to navigate and showcases the companies suppliers to visitors.
Features within the site include a slideshow, Google Map and Contact Form as well as NECSES Webdesign’s inclusive Word Press Content Management System, full search engine optimisation of the website and W3C compliant XHTML.
Testimonial
“I am absolutely delighted with this new Website designed and created by NECSES Webdesign. The whole process was fast and hassle free, the ideas fresh and modern. I would have no hesitation using NECSES Webdesign again in the future and would recommend them to anybody wanting to dramatically improve their web presence.”
Paul Sandlan, Euro Food Machinery Ltd
Written on June 30, 2010
Capricorn Carpets in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk required a website design that reflected their flooring products. Our design was simple, yet reflects the company’s high quality products, professionalism and helpful and informative service to it’s customers.
Features within the site include an image browser, Google Map and Contact Form as well as NECSES Webdesign’s inclusive Word Press Content Management System, full search engine optimisation of the website and W3C compliant XHTML.
Written on June 30, 2010
ORLA Direct in Suffolk, the UK Distributor of ORLA keyboards and organs required a website design that matched the manufacturers in colour but gave a distinct feel of the quality of their products. The site also needed to enable ORLA’s customers to view their demonstration videos and join their mailing list as well as give ORLA direct full control over the management of their website.
These functions were achieved utilising a Word Press content management system and the Vimeo video sharing website giving ORLA Direct full control of their website.
Full search engine optimisation of the website and W3C compliant XHTML are standard features of NECSES Webdesign’s websites
Written on June 10, 2010
Hooves to Paws are a new Dog Walking and Horse Care business based in Chippenham, Suffolk. They wanted a web site that offered control over the content and allowed them to expand the site as their business grows. They also had a very clear idea of how the website should be designed, and NECSES Webdesign’s designers worked with them to produce a clean, exciting and memorable website using a Pluck Content Management System which is an ideal CMS for start up businesses, enabling Hooves to Paws to edit and add/remove pages, text and images as well as manage their own SEO (cutting out the need for additional Optimisation costs).
Written on March 26, 2010
Floors2You in Thetford, Norfolk required a website design that was a bright, vibrant reflection of their flooring products. Our design used primary, bold colours and used large menu buttons to draw the users attention to the carpeting company’s helpful and informative service to it’s customers.
Features within the site include an e-commerce bed shop and on-line cost calculator as well as NECSES Webdesign’s inclusive Content Management System, full search engine optimisation of the website and W3C compliant XHTML.
Testimonial
“NECSES Webdesign understood our needs straight away, and came up with a design that completely reflects our vision of Floors2You at a much lower cost than a previous designer was offering us. Also, the fact we can add new products and manage our own SEO means we are saving money, excellent.”
Chris Lambe, Managing Director, Floors2You.
Written on March 24, 2010
10. Don’t Use Flash for SEO
Flash websites are very eye-catching, but search engines cannot read or index this type of content. If it is impossible to avoid a Flash-centric website and you need search engines to index it, you will have to offer an html version too. Search engines don’t like Flash sites for a reason – a spider can’t read Flash content and therefore can’t index it.
9. Don’t Use too Much JavaScript
Searchbots are not designed to read and understand JavaScript code. If a website contains a few lines of text in the JavaScript code, chances are that searchbots will ignore the entire block of code along with the text. This is true in the case of JavaScript menus. Try to keep the use of JavaScript to a minimum. Alternatively, create an external JavaScript file if it is unavoidable.
8. Do Implement a Robots.txt File
The primary purpose for using a robots.txt file is to gain complete control over the data indexed by the searchbots. Implement a Robots.txt file only when you want to prevent unwanted web pages from being indexed. A robots.txt file is always placed in the root folder of the website where the searchbots can access it easily.
7. Do Target the Correct Keywords
Targeting the wrong keywords is a common mistake many optimizers make and even worse – veteran SEO professionals do it. Marketers select keywords that they think are explanatory of their website, but the average searcher does not think in those same keyword terms. Picking the right keywords can increase or decrease traffic to your SEO campaign. A first-class keyword suggestion aid, for example the Google search-based keyword tool, will help you find keywords that are appropriate for your site.
6. Do Include Long Tail Keywords
With a million websites competing for short tail keywords, it can take more than 6 months to rank in the top 20 for a competitive keyword. In this case, long tail keywords come in handy. Long tail keywords are more specific and can contain the name of a specific product, brand or city. Ranking for long tail keywords is comparatively easier and the rate of conversion is better than that of short tail keywords. Do include keywords in the title tags.
5. Do Maintain a Uniform URL Structure
If your website is dynamic, then you need to modify the URL structure of the web pages. This maintains uniformity and helps searchbots to understand which page it is indexing. It is very easy to maintain the URL structure in dynamic websites. Blogging platforms like WordPress provide an option for permalinks.
4. Don’t Link to Low Quality Websites
Link building is a very crucial aspect of search engine optimization. Search engines consider the number of incoming links to a website as an indication of their popularity and give them priority rankings. Many beginners fail to realize that it is links from authoritative and quality websites that are important and they mistakenly link to low quality websites for higher rankings. This tactic can cause the credibility of the website to go down with search engines and in some cases, the website may get banned.
3. Do Perform Competitive Intelligence
Before starting your search engine optimization program, visit the competing websites in the top results. Research these types of questions:
A. How many websites are competing for the same keyword?
B. How old are the websites in top search engine results pages?
C. How many back links do the top ranking websites list?
D. What type of social media is used by the competing sites?
2. Do Take Advantage of Google Analytics
2009 was the year when web analytics gained momentum. Google Analytics came up with advanced metrics and intelligence report features which revolutionized free analytics tools. Companies realized the benefits of using web analytics tools to extract their relevant data. Implement Google Analytics to analyze data and build a 2010 plan to increase traffic and rates of conversion.
1. Do Create Fresh Content
Search engines are famous for penalizing a website for publishing duplicate content. With plagiarism on the rise and availability of content checking tools such as Copyscape, marketers have become more cautious. Yahoo is considered to be among the harshest of all the search engines with regard to this penalty. Add fresh content to your website to help build visitor interest and credibility with the search engines.
These 10 simple do’s and don’ts can help you to avoid making potentially dangerous SEO mistakes and ensure your site is indexed and boost rankings.
Written on March 1, 2010
The Pakenham Water Mill came to NECSES Webdesign with a remit to provide a low cost, user friendly website that allowed this charitable organisation to update and maintain their website quickly and easily. Key aspects of the project were to promote this unique visitor attraction to as wide an audience as possible through the versatile search engine optimisation system and provide visitors to the site with an insight to the water mill’s history, workings and products. This was achieved with the integration of a Content Management System that enabled full optimisation of the website and means the website can be fully maintained by the Water Mill’s volunteers without additional cost.
Features within the site include a slideshow, News Blog, Gallery, Google Location Map and contact form. Hosting serviices and free e-mail addresses are provided.
Testimonial
“I just wanted to congratulate you on the new website. It is excellent! Such an improvement on the old one – which is just what we wanted to achieve. It fully justifies hiring NECSES Webdesign.”
David Eddershaw, Curator Pakenham Water Mill
Written on March 1, 2010
Design, Supply and Install Ltd (DSI Ltd) in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk required a website with an integrated content management system to allow them full control of their website content, as well as the search engine optimisation of the website, with a design and structure that promoted the many faceted aspects of their business in Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering as well as their Fabrication capabilities.
Features within the site include a built in slide-show, on-line booking form, a Google location map and breadcrumbs for easier navigation.
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Category NEWS, Portfolio | Tags: Breadcrumbs, CMS, Design, google, optimisation, search engines, SEO, web development, Web Design,
