- Research the most potent keywords in your niche/market
- Optimise your website for these keyword(s)
- Generate high quality back links for improving your Page Rank and rankings, and
- Track the position of your website as it improves its search engine ranks.
SEOPressor Review: How to dominate Google search rankings when using WordPress
The first time I managed a WordPress site it came with Yoast already ready for me to continue the SEO, and for a long time I really didn’t know any different; but I became concerned that my SEO work wasn’t having the effect that I needed, so I started my search for a new WordPress SEO plugin.
After a fair bit of searching and testing I landed on SEOPressor, and loved it, but if you want a little more detail then hopefully this short review will help.
Start taking a closer look at SEOPressor today, click here for more information.
So which SEO plugin is best for your WordPress website?
If you’re just starting out or you’re simply looking to make the most out of your website content with videos, articles, categories, tags etc. then Yoast SEO should be good enough for you.
On the other hand, if you are serious about marketing your website and squeezing that little bit extra out of your SEO, then I would highly recommend using SEOPressor Connect.
For the basic stuff they can both pretty much do the same thing, but never versions of SEOPressor now comes with some really great features that really does push your rankings higher.
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OK, it’s the free Yoast SEO plugin that only lets you choose a single keyword/phrase for SEO purposes, but to get multiple keyword focus on Yoast costs a minimum of $69. Whilst you do pay for SEOPressor, the standard version lets you focus on three keywords. Making it easier if you don’t know (or not sure) which term to rank for immediately.
Real-time LSI Recommendations
The best part of the latest version of SEOPressor is real-time LSI recommendations; it will actually recommend Latent Semantic Indexing keywords to use, this is important as Google uses LSI to better understand what your webpages and website is all about. Once you enter your primary search term(s) into SEOPressor the LSI keyword recommendations start suggesting other useful keywords and terms you should be using in your content to get Googles full attention and to ensure that you really dominate the rankings for your chosen term(s). This is not available on any other WordPress SEO plugin and is a priceless addition to WordPress.
Real-time Keyword density
If you’re heavily into your keyword density (which I’m not) then this is a really useful feature as you see your keyword density on the fly, it can be really useful if you want to get the keyword density down you can see it going down as you add more content in real-time rather than having to ‘run’ a request.
Over optimisation alerts
If you are working on a page that is overly optimised (which could seriously damage ranking), you’ll get a real-time alert letting you know that something has gone wrong and you need to look more closely at your optimisation.
Social SEO
Usually when you share content, the social platform you are using will automatically pick and display the Description of the page, whilst this can sometimes be all you need, but social channels are more personal that webpages and Google search, so it makes sense to alter key landing pages to add a little more personality into your description. This is particularly true if you sell to Businesses and Consumers – typically Businesses might only see you on Twitter and LinkedIn (SEOPressor doesn’t actually support LinkedIn yet), but you could in theory have a more professional description on Twitter to that on Facebook to help talk to your different target audiences.
Internal Link Manager
SEOPressor allows you to effortlessly fix, build, and manage the perfect internal link structure to increase your reader’s retention and reduce bounce rate.
Other great features:
Overall
SEOPressor just seems to have been built with Google rankings in mind, and take it for someone that has been in the digital marketing space for more years that I care to remember, this works the closest to how Google actually thinks and ranks, making it a clear winner in my books.
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SEOPressor Review
This is a quick video I put together that explains some of the key differences.
Get Google reviews easily
Reviews on Google could have a small (and positive) impact on your search engine rankings, but more importantly they allow potential customers to see what a great service you offer, which will help drive traffic to your website and aid conversions.
We all trust what other people say about businesses (we tend to ask for personal recommendations ourselves), so the reviews act to reinforce the positive messages that you put out to the market. In addition, businesses can strengthen their relationship with their market by engaging with them directly through their reviews on Google.
Leaving a review is quick and easy to do, and can be left on a desktop, smartphone or tablet and you’ll start to see those wonderful review stars in your listings as reviews get left for you, they make your business really standout from the crowd.
Remember, people can leave a review for you on Google whether you like it or not, so you are best engaging with the reviews to ensure that you get the most from it.
Here is my simple three step process for getting more positive reviews on Google and use it to create more business for yourself.
Step 1: The most important thing is to ensure that your business information is verified on Google as only verified businesses can respond to reviews.
Here is more information on how to verify your business on Google (https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778)
Step 2: Encourage customers to write a Google review for you.
Simply remind your customers once they have had a positive dealing with you to write a review for you on Google, reviewers do need a Google account, so it can sometime mean that not everyone can write a review for you (I know, it seems crazy that some people out there don’t own a Google account!).
If they search for your business name on Google, they should see a full panel in the results with your businesses details on them, they just need to click the “Write a review” button.
You could always email them a link to your page to make the whole process easier for them!
Step 3: Be active and engage with reviewers
It helps people to decide to leave a review if they see that you engage and thank reviewers, others will see that you value the input of customers and will want to leave you their reviews too.
How to rank for RankBrain
Launched in early 2015, RankBrain is Google’s machine learning technology, it uses artificial intelligence to help Google understand exactly what you want to find with your search and delivers you highly relevant search results.
So how do you rank for RankBrain?
Actually the answer is rather simple and something that I’ve been advocating for years now, we know that RankBrain is effective for the 15-20% of the queries that Google has never seen before; this clearly indicates that these are natural language queries, typically long typed out queries or more likely voice queries asked on smart devices (smartphones, tablets etc.).
So optimising for these is easy, just write in natural language, write for humans, write for your target audience. If in doubt read your content out load to see if it makes sense (again, something I’ve been advocating for years), if it doesn’t make sense then your content isn’t correctly optimised and it need rewriting.
As a content writer, you tend to find that the highest quality content is written in a very natural way that is conversational.
So that’s it, check your content, check that it reads well and you will improve your Google rankings.
Data or Creativity?
From Just One Pound
I was talking to a group of small business owners, one of which was the very proud owner of small retail business that literally started with one pound and had grown it from there into a very sizeable business indeed and is now turning over many thousands of pounds in about 18 months.
Unfortunately, she had some to a sticking point in which she was struggling to get the business to grow further; it all seemed to stem from the fact that she had started the business with no real vision of what she wanted the business to be or do and so she didn’t really have any idea on how she wanted it to grow in the future.
We talked for a while and I realised that as well needing some assistance with asking the difficult strategic questions (who is the customer?, what do they value?, how is she value better than her competitors? etc), she needed something very visual to grab hold of in order to help her move forward.
As she started the business with just £1, I started to look at business milestones from the point of view of how that simple one pound coin, had grown. How quickly did she double that pound? With that £2 how didn’t did she double that to £4 etc, I started to draw it out for her and she liked the concept.
I’ve replicated it below, the simple idea is that from a single £1, doubling your money each step, it’s just 21 steps to you making your first £1m.
She’s pinned this on her office wall and she marking out these 21 milestone steps, dating each step as see goes, she has found visualisation of her business incredibly powerful, she is also undertaking a proper strategic review to ensure that she is making her money doing the very best activities.
Volkswagen cannot possibly survive the emissions scandal unscathed
The brand impact
So can Volkswagen survive?
Link Building in 2015
Link building is fraught with difficulty, recent Google updates mean that if you get links from a poor website, then it will negatively effect your ranking.
But how can you get these all important links?
Two recent posts on LinkedIn help show the way:
These articles offer practical advice to help you improve your search engine rankings.
Good Luck
Web Design tips to make your life incredibly easy
Every great web designer has a true secret or two that they use time and time again to provide the best service for their clients, this insider knowledge is vital when you are looking at your own design project.
It's quite a collection. Enjoy
The Optimum Line Length
The Baymard Institute suggest that 50-75 characters per line. This sort of length energises readers and keeps them engaged in your content, and we know that the more engaged readers are, the more likely they are to stay on your page and take the action that you want them to take.
Use Video to show visitors something real
Kendra Gaines at WebdesignerDepot.com rightly argues that visitors are wanting a connection to business and brands, video allows us to do this by showing them something real and of substance. I couldn't agree more.
Use only Appropriate Images
Graham at Effective Website Design makes the sensible point that images need to be carefully selected, and the process itself shouldn't be overlooked or undertaken quickly. “Do not use images indiscriminately, lots of images can lose the page focus.” says Graham, and he's right, there is nothing off putting that images on pages that have no context to the subject matter.
Responsive Design - it's the future
Nick Pettit at treehouse wrote a compelling blog post last year about Responsive Design, and steps readers through the concepts in a very practical manner.
Adrian Fraguela at Silver talks about thinking about the user experience in web design, one of the more interesting areas they look at briefly is User Flow, that is the need to consider exactly how users will move around your site and ensuring that your design allows them to interact with the site successfully.
Digital Marketing Predications for 2015!
In this article on LinkedIn, I've tried to capture some of the key elements that are important to Digital Marketing in 2015 - enjoy.
Stop asking ‘How’ Google rank websites and start asking ‘Why’.
What makes up the Google algorithm takes up way too much thinking time, just accept the fact that Google pushes websites through their machinery and out pops the ranking for your site.
A better question to ask is “Why do Google rank sites the way that they do?”
From a users perspective Googles aim of is very simple; it wants to understand what information you want to see when you query its search engine and then it wants to ensure that it shows you the very best results.
Why is understanding this a better way to understand Google?
- It understand what your site is all about
- When visitors get to it they engage with it (good time on site, low bounce rate etc)
- They potentially share your content
This means that you need to ensure that you answer the questions you think that the market has for your products and services – this might actually mean developing a formal FAQ section, but it also means ensuing that they easily understand what your website and pages are all about, and how exactly you can help them.
Seriously, understand what Google is trying to do and help them to help you, and you will start to rank well within Google. Period.
Web Site Usability - what do you need to consider!
Web pages should be self explanatory and obvious.
The MUM Test
When considering the basics for web page usability, I like to ask the following simple question 'Would my Mum be able to use it!'. You see my mum wasn't a tech head, she wasn't particularly well educated in these modern technologies, so she wasn't at all web savvy; and if we think of our potential visitors in this way then we will always ensure that our sites are a simple (and easy) to use as possible.
Key Areas to consider
Whitespace – clean space that makes your site easy to view, read, understand and use. Good use of space can draw the visitors eyes to the important parts (and links) of the site.
Noise – is information fighting for attention or does any other element vie for the visitors attention (strong contrasts next to text for example (i.e. bold graphics or images next to key information can force eyes away from this text)).
Length – short page length, visitors shouldn't have to scroll too far to get to the information that they want, information “below the fold” will not get seen as much as information above it.
Consistence – across navigation, fonts, layout, colour etc
Images – need to be relevant and compelling.
Functionality – how well the site interacts with visitors and visitors with the site.
Organisation of information – and links. Do users know where they are and where to get to the common information they might need? Can visitors get to the action you want them to take easily. Are the web pages split into clearly defined areas.
Speed – how fast the site loads (< 2 second is ideal) as customers may leave if they have to wait to view the information on your site. Site speed is also important for good Google rankings.
Interactivity – how well can visitors interact with your site, does search work well for example?
Things visitors should never ask themselves
- Where am I?
- Where do I start?
- Where did they put ….?
- What information do I need on this page?
- Why did they call it that?
- Why is that there?
Common questions to ask
- What is the first thing you notice on the site? Is your USP clearly visible?
- Is there a clear visual hierarchy? (headers, important information etc) – newspapers do this REALLY well!
- Are the pages consistent (everyone knows instictively how to read a newspaper and what the headlines mean, bold intro text, main story, caption under images, we know to go to the back pages for the sport and somewhere close to the middle for TV listings etc). Familiarity is reassuring.
- Do you think it's too cluttered?
- Are you having a hard time finding the information you want?
- Does the site feel well organised?
- Do you have to scroll to get to important information?
- Is the site slow?
- What do you think of the fonts, colours and images?
- Can you easily search for product information?
- Can you easily find the contact information?
The Search Engine Ranking factor
Learn from Politicians!
Just like our politicians, you too can build a professional online brand and profile for your business with some very simple tips; and changing the way your website portrays and promotes you could do wondered for your sales too!
The Personal Statement
Just like the political parties your business should employ a personal statement. Your personal statement and the way your present it on your web site is critical as this is one of the first ‘things’ that a visitor who doesn't know you very well will seek out (whether they are aware of it or not!), and it has the added benefit of helping them understand more about your business.
Your company's personal statement simply needs to be the top 2-3 things that you want your visitors to know about your business, they should show how you can help your prospects.
For example, you might want your visitors to be aware of your huge selection of products, the fact that you are an award winner, your customer service stats, your low prices etc – whatever it is that you think your market will go wild over and that you can satisfy.
Once you've decided on what your business personal statement should be you need to ensure that it is easily and quickly seen on your site. Are these 2-3 statements obvious on your site? Are they mentioned at all or hidden in your navigation?
Your Professional Profile
You only need to take a quick look at any of the political parties web sites to see what views, experience and values their leader has.
You can find out about their history, achievements, what they stand for and how they believe that they can personally help you.
Does your site portray its top Directors in the same way? Is it easy to find out about them, what skills, experience and background they have, and what they think that they can do for your prospects?
If you don’t talk about the top people in your business then you are missing a trick; research constantly shows that the “About Us” pages are usually one of the top pages that prospects visit on your site and these pages can help sell yourself and your business if done correctly.
Say what you want about our political system, the parties and politicians, they do know how to promote themselves and how to get us following them and believing in them, and by following these simple tips you will be able to better promote your site and make you more appealing to your prospects.
POTS and PANS!
Obviously you don’t want to own a POTS, these tend to be trashy, thin content, poorly linked to sites, where as the more superior PANS have lots of lovely content that visitors want to read and share, their content also attracts links naturally.
A site needs to have a clear and definite purpose; if this can be portrayed successfully to visitors then half of the battle has been won.
Sleek, modern design is a winner. Visitor needs and design trends change often, sites that don’t follow these will look dated very quickly and will be an instant turn-off.
Content needs to be unique and fresh and needs to speak concisely to your target market – avoid waffle and clutter and keep the messages as simple and as concise as possible.
Ultimately for any website to be successful it needs people to use it; site design and appearance are very important, but they will never replace the need for excellent usability.
A websites navigation affects how usable it is, and when developing or redesigning an existing site then the navigation (how you visitors are doing to find the great content) should be your primary concern.
In Summary
POTS | PANS | |
Site Design | Designed in the 80’s/90’s. Cluttered. |
Appealing Modern – fresh, clean. |
Content | SEO focused. Doesn't read well. |
User focused. Clear, well-written content. |
Clarity | Visitors confused. Unsure what you site is about. |
Purpose clear. Visitors feel happy on your site. |
Usability | Confusing leaving visitors impatient. They will leave. |
Simple to use. Customers stay and look around. |
Navigation | Visitors can’t find what they need. No structure to site at all. |
Visitors can find what they need quickly. 1-3 clicks and they are there. |
Should you undertake Link Exchange with other businesses
The idea of exchanging links with other websites, typically on some kind of special ‘we recommend’, ‘our partners’, ‘friends of ours’ or something similar, used to be a primary method of building links to sites.
One of the major ways that the Google ranking algorithm works is in making the suggestion that a link to your website from another one is a positive vote from them to you, Google used this vote to basically determine your reputation (in fact it still works this way today).
The problem was that as this method of gaining links if very cheap and very easy to do, suddenly all sites had hundreds (if not thousands) of links pointing to them, and search engines like Google realised that these types of links weren't really an honest vote of recommendation for the websites but rather just a way for businesses to boost their rankings.
Whilst website owners can still do this, this approach to link building is nowhere near as beneficial as it was in the past.
As a result, less weight was ‘reputation’ weight was given to what were labelled ‘reciprocal links’ – a term which covers the scenario I have just referred to.
As it became common knowledge that reciprocal links had been devalued, many businesses simply gave up on them. Some even went to the length of deleting all of the reciprocal links they had in case they incurred a penalty against their site.
It’s actually a myth that reciprocal links result in a penalty. These types of links have just become devalued, which is very different to them attracting a penalty.
Reciprocal links still provide value to the sites involved, however, the level of that value is less than it was before; but if you are struggling for links then some value is better than no value at all – so it would be a huge mistake to ignore reciprocal links altogether. You just shouldn't make this your only linking strategy, providing good quality content to attract natural and real links is always be best approach.
Two sides to every coin!
Each link you have on another site is a chance that one of their visitors make click the link and come to your site; the way reciprocal links are tend to be set up (on special ‘links’ pages) then you probably won’t get much referral traffic from them, but again, some traffic is better than none.
Reciprocal links are not created equally!
Link partners should be in some way related to your own. In our example above, your soft furnishings site would be much better served if you had a link from a home improvement site!
Always think before exchanging links – “Would someone else consider this link to be logical? Or would they be confused as to why my site has a link from this one!”
A few links from irrelevant sites isn't a big deal, but the more you have the more confusing your site’s back link profile becomes, which makes it more difficult for search engines to clearly establish the topic of your website and which keywords to rank it well for.
Also, too many irrelevant links can look very spammy and would start to lead you to a penalty by the major search engines.
Quality wins!
If search engines see that you are linking to low quality sites, again this is a red flag to them and you may get a penalty (or just reduced ranking).
So, if you’re unsure about the quality or trustworthiness of a website then play it safe and don’t link to it.
Approaching other sites
You’ll find that the success rate for link exchange isn't great, and it takes some time and effort, but it does work. The key is to do a bit of research on them first. You shouldn't just send out hundreds of emails using the same set template. That might seem like the easiest way but your emails will mostly get ignored.
Finally!
But this approach should be a low level tactic and not the main way to gain links, like I said earlier, great content will always attract natural links from other sites.
Checking AdWords
What Content should you write for your website?
Content, the right content is amazing stuff; it can drive high quality traffic to your website and also convert these visitors into customers.
But what content should you write?
So how else can you capture what topics visitors are interested in?
Most websites have the ability to give you subtle clues as to what you need to write. When a visitor comes to your site, IF what they want to see isn’t clear to them then many of them will go to your search function to find the content within your site.
All you need to do is capture these search strings and you have the start of your content funnel.
A quick search on Google will show you how to unlock the onsite searches for your particular CMS (Content Management Systems), but let’s take the example of WordPress, one of the most popular for websites.
In Google Analytics. From your site profile click on Admin.
From here you’ll see a sub-tab for Profile Settings. Click on that to bring up the Edit Web Profile Information screen.
Scroll down to the bottom the Edit screen to the Site Search Settings. Ensure that you click the radio button to track Site Search.
Next you need to enter a query parameter. On a typical WordPress installation, the query parameter is simply the letter “s”.
How can I be sure that “s” is the query parameter for my WordPress site?
Whatever is between the ? and the = is your query parameter!
Now Google Analytics will start to collect your entire on site queries, it can take 24 hours to start collecting these so please be patient.
Once you have these search queries you’ll start to get a better understanding of what content your visitors want to see.
What the future of SEO?
Before Google all you needed to do was stuff your web site full of keywords and as long as you had more keywords stuffed than anyone else you appeared at the top of the rankings for that particular ‘stuffed’ term.
Since Google started spreading their magic on the search landscape things have changed, suddenly keyword stuff got you absolutely nowhere and links to site became the most important factor (as links suggested that the page was liked by someone).
Then Google started to look more at the quality of the links that link to you – if a high quality, relevant and trusted site linked to you then Google rightly took more notice of this link and trusted it more than lower quality sites that linked to you.
Things are changing again with Google Panda (rolled out in 2011) and further more with Hummingbird (rolled out in 2013) – now the quality AND meaning of your content is looking more important.
So with these algorithm changes and other developments, what does the future hold?
As SEO practitioners we are still providing good quality content that answers visitor’s questions whilst chasing those important linkbacks, but will all this activity be beneficial in the next few years!
Backlines are still important and will continue to be until something else comes along which can help Google understand the reputation and trustworthiness of a site; but as links can be easily gained AND the value of link erodes over time then a new way of working out Reputation needs to be brought into play.
Reputation networks like Klout, PeerIndex and PeerReach are examples of other networks trying to understand the reputation of a site, business or individual by trying to understand the context of any engagement; predominately in a social media context.
But it’s this social context that holds the key for reputation in real-time; with the erosion of link value over time then Google admit that once a link to a piece of content is provided it almost immediately starts to become out of date (hence the erosion of value over time), so real-time analysis MUST be the way forward.
The reality of the future of SEO and the question of reputation probably lies in a mixture of the types of work; i.e. the analysis that Klout, PeerIndex and PeerReach are working on and the latest Google Hummingbird platform changes.
A merger of these two sides would mean that Google would have a idea (in real-time) of how a brand, business or individual is being talked about, and from this it could be determined whether that discussion or engagement looks to provide positive or negative reputable (lots of links/mentions from could mean that it’s a valued resource for example).
Also with the Hummingbird update Google is showing that it’s starting to understand natural language and the semantics on how question and answers can be phrased.
I imagine within the next ten years Google (or AN Other) will be able to determine the basic reputation of a site or author (by links and real-time reputation analysis) and understand the real meaning of the content on a site; with these two pieces of information a search engine provider will be able to provide search engine results that provide the very best answer to a question with a higher degree of certainty.
But as we do not live in this world right now then links and great quality content are the way to go.
The new Lead Generation Content Strategy
Inbound Marketing: The SECRETS
Inbound marketing is all about your prospects finding you, which means that it’s important that your precious and brilliant content is found when it’s needed to be found.
I’m sure we've all done the same thing at some point in our careers; we've created a brilliant piece of content (website content, video, article, blog or social media post etc) we have lined up several online channels to host and promote the piece and clicked send … then sat back ….. and waited ….. and waited some more …. but nothing happens!
No interest at all in our lovely, well crafted content, but it was perfect, what went wrong?
Well the chances are that simply your excellent message just didn't rise above the rubbish and the clutter – image this from a social media perspective, as soon as you click the send button your piece of content is the freshest and newest piece out there and it appears at the top of the stream, but second later it’s buried in a pool of noise.
As an experiment I simply tweeted the hashtag #Marketing and within just two minutes it was buried in my own twitter stream with by all the other stuff I follow, Even when I searched Twitter for my update after only 10 minutes my tweet has disappeared under 187 tweets – for all intents and purposes this post was now gone.
So what could I have done differently?
Very simply I just needed to make my post rise above the clutter and this is easiest done with my advocates – and virtually everyone and every business has some of these. These are your greatest fans, your enthusiastic followers.
These people serve two key functions:
- They a can extend the life of any content by simply sharing it for you, but more importantly,
- They take on a valuable “word of mouth” presence.
And whats even better is that these advocates are still working for you when you aren't around, constantly posting, sharing, and mentioning your brand.
How do you find your advocates?
They should be fairly obvious to spot if your close to your online marketing channels, these are the people that will readily retweet, like, favourite or share your content; they respond to your requests, they comment and talk about you (and often without being prompted).
The trick is to recognise these traits in your social networks and recognise the individuals - network with them, thank them, provide easier access to your best staff, provide extra content, training or even prizes. If your industry is suitable for it then try rewarding with gamification (providing points and badges etc).
Numerous big businesses understand the importance of their advocates and work with them – Google have supplied advocates with freebies in the past as a thank you; Samsung provide special events for their advocates and chances to get their hands on the latest devices (the recent Samsung Unpacked 2014 in Barcelona was a great example; Walmat creates specialised online communities of shoppers to help spread their messages. It is everywhere.
It’s the very importance of these advocates is the reason that I seem to find the constant need to explain to people that it’s not the number of Followers or Friends, Retweets or Likes that important, but who Follows and Likes you, who Retweets or Likes your posts.
One good advocate is worth more than 1,000 Followers that don’t listen to you.
Summary:
So listen to your channels, discover your advocates and build a relationship with them, then the life of your precious content will be lengthened allowing your important messages to reach more people.
Keyword Stuffing
You need to know that Google’ has grown very wise to this practice, and as soon as they consider that you have undertaken any form of keyword stuffing you will get a Google ranking penalty and in severe case be delisted from their index (i.e. no-one will be able to find you from a Google search).
Avoid keyword stuffing at all costs, and only include the major keywords that will assist your pages in being indexed properly by ALL search engines.
For an example of an overstuffed web page, take a look at this >> keyword stuffing.
So what does Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) give you?
Typically a SEO professional will handle and provide on website design, content marketing and website optimisation tactics - all designed to provide the search engine visibility that you need.
Bottom line with search results is that the higher your site appears in the search results, the more people will come and see your site, the more visitors you get, the more customers you will get.
KEY BENEFITS OF MY SEO SERVICES IN YORKSHIRE
- Expert advice on how to achieve desired results
- Drives high-quality, profitable traffic to your website or individual web pages
- Gives your business long-term visibility, never short term hope.
- Introduces your brand to a much wider audience
- Increases traffic to your website
- Provides a cost-effective method of reaching your target market
- Establishes trust and credibility in the marketplace
Don’t forget your keywords in your Social Media
But the keywords are king rule is as equally important in social media, and this is why.
At the moment Google views everything online as if it was a website – in fact in essence that’s all your social channels are.
Take your Twitter account for example – it’s just a page (albeit a long one) of content, same for your Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube and Pinterest accounts etc.
So if Google does see your social streams as a web page element, doesn't it make sense that these also contain your best keywords - just as your web pages do!
So when you post, think carefully about what you want to say and craft them carefully to get your valuable keywords in.
This will ensure that in search these could be more easily picked up by search engines, but also your brilliantly crafted accounts start to show your authority, which will be passed to your website and web pages when you link back to them.
AND like your web pages, please don’t add posts purely to spam your keywords, Google is wise to this trick just as it is with websites and it could lead to a social penalty!
3 minutes to a better website
- Visitors MUST be able to understand instantly what products/services you provide.
- Visitors MUST be able to find products or services to buy from you.
- Visitors MUST be able to understand your value proposition
MINUTE 1:
Choose a close friend; choose someone who isn't close to your business.Get them to look at your website and get them to write down what product/service they think you provide.
They have 1 minute to complete this task.
MINUTE 2:
Choose another friend; again, someone who isn’t close to your business.Give them 4-5 products of yours to find and see if they can easily find them on your website.
They have 1 minute to complete this task.
MINUTE 3:
This is about your Value Proposition.A Value Proposition helps you to connect to your customers; it says to them ‘we know you’, ‘we know what you’re looking for’. It’s the value proposition that makes them love you and your products. A good value proposition explains how you can solve your prospects problems, it tells your prospects why they should buy from you.
Choose yet another friend; again, someone who isn’t close to your business.
Get them to look at your website and get them to write down 3-4 reasons why they think they should buy from you.
They have 1 minute to complete this task.
You're done!
OK, that’s your 3 minutes. Take a look at the results and see if it tells you anything.- Is your offering obvious?
- Can people find your products/services easily?
- Are reasons obvious as to why visitors should buy from you?
Good luck
Old skool SEO still works
Matt was only really repeating what he has basically said from day one, and that is that you can do pretty much anything that is ethical to help promote your website, but just don’t be spammy about it. Rule number one always has been and always will be – think about your market first and ranking second.
So what “old school” SEO still works?
The truth is that pretty much everything!
Guest blogging
Ok, this was the recent big topic that started to get webmasters a bit jittery, you can still be a guest blogger for someone else, there are just some very simple ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’ that you need to follow.Do guess blogging as it can drive targeted visitors to your own site. Always add value to the blog that you are writing for – consider their audience AND yours. Consider creating a separate landing page for this guest blog post that adds value to the post.
Don’t use the same article that you have used elsewhere, this simply doesn't work. If you like the theme of a previous article you have written then consider a heavy rewrite of it. Don’t write a heavily weighted keyword article. Neither should you expect a link to your website, if this is your only motivation then don’t guest blog.
Forum backlinks
Do try to get links back from forums – there still is SEO value in doing this, but ensure that the forum is highly relevant to the pages that you want to link to. As with guest blogging consider creating a landing page that provides additional value to the forum comment you post – give the readers a real reason to click on your link.Don’t create lots of spammy low value comments on Forums with a link back to your site, and don’t put your keywords in the Name field, and NEVER use automatic blogging software – that is so 1990’s and it will get you a Google penalty.
Directories
Don’t bulk submit your details to every directory that you can find, and NEVER use automated listing software.
Your own link pages
Do have quality outbound links to relevant websites, use pages that are highly themed and only consider links that are relevant to your audience.Don’t have pages full of random outbound links, Google know that this type of activity is usually from link exchange programs and it could get you a penalty.
SEO benefits of Social Media
Let’s take a quick look at the benefits that social media could bring your to your SEO.
Social Media in general:
There are a couple of linked reasons why we would want to use social networks in the first place.
- It allows people to share your information and links with their Friends and Followers
- It allows a greater chance for more people to see your brand and your products
- You get a spread of profiles and individuals that link back to your site
Google+:
Specifically Google+ looks good because of the obvious tight integration with Google Search; this benefits you because Google has a good chance of knowing a little about everyone that use its services.
It knows for example if individuals are interested in or an expert in ‘home decor’ or ‘flooring’ because of their Google+ profiles and/or their search patterns and/or their Gmail topics etc – now if you sell flooring and one of these individuals shares or +1’s some of your content (image/URL etc) then Google will naturally believe that your site or specific page is more important than a competitors that hasn't been shared by these interested parties.
Social sites as information hubs:
We also look at social media sites now as information hubs (a bit like mini websites).
The future of SEO and Social Media:
We (the SEO community) also don’t yet fully understand how Google looks at social engagement (individuals sharing social content), but whether it happens now or in the future, if individuals engage with your social content and brand then it can only benefit ranking.
SEO techniques you should NEVER try
Many businesses, including some top international companies, have fallen foul of Google Webmaster Guidelines and have been penalised by being removed from Google index.
Google has developed sophisticated algorithms to look out for websites and website owners that look like they are attempting game or beat Google at their own game. You can’t win.
Here are a couple of tips to ensure that it doesn't happen to you.
Keyword stuffing
OK, so you have worked out what keywords will bring visitors to your website; once you have this knowledge the temptation is to stuff these keywords all over your pages!
This is a definite violation of Google Guidelines and will result in getting you delisted from their index. Write your pages as if you were talking to someone about that product or service, use your keyword, but use then sparingly.
Automated comments
It doesn't take long searching the internet to find companies that are willing to sell you software that will enable you to leave comments automatically on blogs and forums – this can’t go wrong can it as we all know that Google loves to see links to your website.
Actually Google employs some very clever software that detects instances of when you attempt to leave lots of comments on blogs and forums, leaving lots of comments simply isn't natural behaviour. It’s fine to find forums and blogs that are related to your business and leave comments on them (in moderation), but do so with the understanding that your comments need to help a wider community, you need to add value to these sites, not just expect a link back to your site.
Paid links
Lots of high profile websites offer to sell links to other sites to help their ranking, and it can be very tempting to use these services as a quick win for ranking.
Google knows the sites that sell links and will penalise sites that they link to, also many of these site will again be unrelated to yours and so Google will see these links as unnatural (i.e. these sites wouldn't naturally link to yours).
Generic Directories
There are lots of internet directories that offer (either paid or free) to provide a link back to your website. As many of these directories are just pages of links to websites then Google again sees these as unnatural linkage and if you are found to have listings in lots of these directories then they are likely to take actions against your site.
Linking from directories that are dedicated to your market or location are better, as are using well known household name directories. These can be a useful way to gain traffic, but don’t reply on this tactic for ranking purposes.
This is a technique that attempts to hide content from website visitors but is instead made available only for to search engines to see; again Google is now really clever at spotting these techniques.
All content should be available to your visitors, it should be informative; it should make sense and read well.
Doorway Pages
This isn't a technique that is used much today, but Doorway pages are pages that are again just written just for search engines and typically have content on them that is not able to be seen by website visitors. They are used to try to build a large amount of authority into a single page; these pages then automatically take visitors off to a completely different website.
Again, they tend to be stuffed with keywords, but once again it’s a technique that Google are very good at sniffing out.
In Summary
There isn't any way that you can beat Google and fool it into giving you better search engines rankings that your site deserve – always write pages with your visitor in mind.
Good quality, well written site will always (in time) rank better than poorly written, low quality ones.
Best Practice SEO on a budget
Keywords:
The first step is to think carefully about how potential visitors are likely to find you when they fire up their favourite search engine; what are the key terms that you would expect them to type into the search engine to find you.
Don’t be too general here, if you are repair clocks and you live in Bristol then “Clock Repairer in Bristol” is a very good start. When putting your list together, consider the ‘transactional’ keywords that someone might use for your service, these are words that might be used in an internet search that would suggest that some if ready or likely to buy, and could also help you understand how you might be trying to position yourself as a business.
So back to our “Clock Repairer” example, they could use something like:
“Cheap Clock Repairer in Bristol”
“The best Clock Repairer in Bristol”
“Order a clock repair in Bristol”
Also consider informational searches that someone might try; these are terms that show that someone is looking for more information before they make a purchases decision, those could be things like:
“Is my clock worth repairing?”
“How do I look after a clock?”
“How much is my clock worth?”
The idea with a lot of these informational terms is that you are looking to show that you know what you are talking about; you are building trust and credibility with your web pages.
Once you have 3-5 key terms that you think visitors will type to find your services then ensure that these terms are on your web pages (then search engines will get the idea that these are the terms that you want to rank well for).
Writing your pages:
It’s always worth writing your pages as if you are talking to someone who doesn’t know anything about what you do or sell, this way you are more likely to talk to your visitor in the right (consultative) way.
Always remember to add more words like “you” and “your” etc and less of the “me” and “us” etc, that way you will be writing with your audience in mind.
Tagging:
Remember to include unique META Tags on each page, specifically ensure that the META Description and META Title are completed and unique for every page.
Ensure that the META Title is around 50-60 characters in length and the META Description is 100 and 150 characters in length.
Links are the lifeblood of your website ranking, without any links to your pages you will not rank on any search engines and you’ll never found.
Think about any relationship you might have with other businesses – partners, suppliers, trade bodies or associations etc. See if you can get links from any of these websites.
If you create good content and people like your site and you’ll start to attract natural links.
Social Media
Use some form of social media when you start off, whether it be Twitter, LinkedIn, a blog, Facebook or Pinterest, and post often, several times a day is good, and make the post relate to your business.
To start off with pick one network and work hard at it – social media posting can take a lot of time and effect and it’s not worth spreading yourself thinly. You’ll have a good idea where most of your audience hang out – post there.
The search engines will quickly pick up the fact that you are posting quality content and hopefully engaging with your audience – this will help with ranking.
Can’t do it yourself?
As you won’t be able to afford to pay for speculative SEO work by an agency then look around for an SEO company that is willing to offer a ‘Risk and Reward’ deal. With this type of contract they will agree that they won’t get paid unless then get you on the first page of your chosen search engines for agreed keywords.
If they are successful then it will cost you money, but at least you know you're only paying for keywords that are on the first page of search engine results.
WARNING: Never pay an agency who guarantee that they can get you onto the first page – no-one can guarantee it.
It isn't quick:
Online Lead Generation – Great Follow up Strategies that WILL lead to sales
Well if you want your lead generation efforts to generate decent sales, you need to build a robust lead follow up system.
Ideally what you want to achieve is for your lead follow up system to manage your sales leads automatically.
Here are the things that you need in place to help you towards your goal of online lead to sale.
Create a landing page
Hopefully you have taken this first very basic step in generating great sales leads.
This page should really hold two purposes:
- Get them to buy online - if your prospect buys straight away then you don’t have to bother with any additional sales process!
- If they fail to buy then you want to capture their details, in my last post I talked about great ways of capturing prospect details. The prospect capturing system could be part of the online sales process – start by asking for an email address on a single page, then if they leave the sales process part way through you have their email contact details to enable follow-up.
If your lead leaves your page, then it’s possible that the left because they wanted to take a look at someone else’s offering before they make their final purchase decision - if you can get in touch with them within a couple of minutes then you're highly likely to retain the sale - the longer you leave this recontact, the less likely you are to get the sale.
What’s the Score?
If possible, ‘Score’ your lead.
If they have been on your site for a while or visited numerous pages or emailed you then they are probably more interested in what you have to offer.
Other factors like their geographic location may make them a better prospects - or in B2B sales did they leave you with a ‘real’ business email address or just an anonymous Gmail or Hotmail account?
As soon as you have your contact details, it’s time to start following up with them. Email is easiest and quickest to do and you can automate the process. But as soon as you can, you really need to get a real sales person trying to contact them. Remember people buy off people, not off automated emails!
The initial immediate follow up will ensure that you are still very fresh in their mind.
Get them in your list
Many businesses mess about with having a separate list for prospects and one for customers, get them all in the same database, it’s much easier.
Ensure that you are able to track all the communications that you sent them or the name of any campaign that brought them into you (all very useful analysis).
Also ensure that you have an ‘opt-out’ field in case they decide that they no longer want to hear from you, but only ensure that you stop sending them communications if they ask.
Keep sending the updates and newsletter etc along with your regular customers.
These simple steps can help you put your lead follow up virtually on autopilot so you have time to work with clients and hot prospects rather than constantly prospecting for new business.
Online Lead Generation Magnet
By its very definition, a magnet is something that attracts objects – in this case we want to attract leads.
There is a vast amount of traffic online, and what every single website wants to do is pull that traffic it into their website – but online traffic management mustn't end there!
Now the ultimate value is that they buy from you; but even if they don’t buy they could have left you with the next best thing – their contact details.
Many, many site and business owners never think about collecting visitor data to use as a remarketing tool, but it is incredibly important that you do; the more details you get about visitors who are interested in your product and service, the better, more profitable business you can generate.
So how do you generate these sales leads?
The best way is to provide some useful information.
We all love information on the internet that can help us – maybe help us do our job better, save or make us money, and your potential customers are no different.
Now they might not be willing to part with hard cash for the information you have, but they might be willing to leave you their email address at the very least!
There are numerous ways we can do this online, but the best ways are:
- eBooks - needn't be huge, a decent 20 page eBook can be a great way to establish leadership and authority in a marketplace
- A downloadable “kit” - worksheets, videos, articles etc
- Free quote or consultation - these could be delivered in person, my email or over the phone. The great thing about these is that the requester knows that they will need to part with a good amount of information to get the best advice or quote from you.
- Email course - send out a series of informative and educational emails. Over the course of a few weeks or a month you could send numerous emails automatically building authority and trust with the recipient.
- Free samples - if you are the type of business that can send out samples then they make a great lead generation tool.
- Activate a trial - software companies always collect visitor details if they want to download software and get a free trial. During the trial period ensure that you send out automated emails to encourage a conversation with them.
- Whitepapers - a white paper is basically a smaller version of an eBook – so if you find you can’t provide enough detail to make a convincing eBook, make a convincing white paper. They are inexpensive to develop and will add greatly to your credibility.
- Newsletters - do you have information that you can regularly send out as a newsletter?
- Invitation to a webinar - people love webinars, mainly because they are usually free to attend; they are a great way to delivery the same piece of information to a wide audience and they are very cost effective to do.
In Summary
As already mentioned, once you've built up a steady stream of internet traffic, your job is far from over. You now have to implement some type of lead generation magnet(s).
With the automated delivery of follow up emails you’ll start to see some great results and you’ll find that some of these prospects will start to known on your door.
Best of luck.
Get Engaged, Socially Engaged!
But social engagement is more than just generating traffic; it’s also about learning from your market, having conversations with buyers and potential buyers, building a relationship with them, and maybe - just maybe, helping your search engine rankings along the way.
So how does a business become socially engaged?
Here are 6 great ways to become socially engaged.
Do things differently
Think differently – your website might be absolutely professional to the core (as it should be), but social engagement is about having a conversation with your market, and being 100% corporate isn’t always the best policy.
Try relaxing your grasp on corporate speak a little, try having a little fun, talk to your audience in the relaxed way that I’m sure many of them will want to be talked to.
Be prepared to take a well thought-out risk – this will enable you to test and learn. Digital media is ever changing, as a business you need to be flexible and nimble to keep up with it.
Earn your way (by listening)
Listen in social media is really important – remember you’re using social channels to have conversations (not just sell your products and services), so listening must play its part.
Millions of people might be talking about your business, your brand or products and services that you supply; you need to listen to what they are saying so that you can respond correctly (and timely).
Great insights from your market will help you create better value for your market, and therefore better value for your business.
Make social a culture
Don’t make the mistake of sitting one person at a computer and ask them to do social media as well as their current work. Make social a cultural shift within your business by recruiting staff into social roles, report on their activity at least monthly so that everyone inside the business see’s the activity been undertaken and the benefits that are being generated.
Be big and bold
When you start off in social media, it’s easy to fall into the trap that you think no-one is listening and no-one is interested in what you have to say, but they are.
Be bold, talk about topics that are not only important to you as a business but also what is important to your audience. If you provide credit cards or bank accounts then be bold and discuss debt; if you sell mortgages talk about the problem of not been able to keep up with repayments; if you sell software then help people to understand what might happen if that software fails – be brave, be bold.
Creation and Curation
It’s not always about posting topics that you have created in-house or starting your own discussions; sometimes it’s important to comment on other’s work, maybe other similar businesses. Content can come from many different sources, look and listening to what’s outside of your business to see which of it can help you to engage with your market and get the conversation going.
Internal Collaboration
As already alluded to, Social media is a huge role for just one person in a decent sized business; but it is also true that social media is bigger than just one department. Call upon your colleagues in Sales, Customer Services and Support to help facilitate content, topics and discussions; these teams can help provide real-time insights as to what’s important to talk about.
None of this happens overnight, but if you are starting your social engagement journey, consider these points and getting you towards your end game will become much easier.