There are many myths surrounding SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) which can make it difficult for small business owners to implement effective methods for improving their website visibility. In addition, many SEO agencies and consultants charge fees that are outside of the average small business marketing budget. However, there are several things that you can do as a small business to improve your chances of ranking on Google without having to incur colossal consultancy fees.
Small Business SEO – Big Business Website
Many small business owners approach SEO consultants looking for advice as to how they can get their 5 page website onto page one of Google for highly competitive search terms. The short answer is that you won’t (or, at least, it’s highly unlikely that you ever will). “Flat” structured websites featuring no deep content that are rarely updated with new content and have poor internal linking structures do not often perform very well in the search engines. Search engines love new content, so websites that are seen to be constantly expanding and getting bigger will eventually perform better in the search results than websites that just stick with 5 pages of static content. Small business owners should therefore “think big business” if they want to succeed online. Some of the world’s most successful sites feature thousands of pages and this is one of the reasons why they are so successful.
Be Realistic With Your Objectives
If you’re launching a new website about car insurance, don’t expect to get listed on page one of Google’s search results anytime soon for the keywords “car insurance”. Even with a huge marketing budget it can take many months to achieve page one results for highly competitive search terms such as this. Start off with a few realistic objectives. For example, think specifically about your niche. What kind of car insurance are you offering? What age group or demographic are you targeting? Whereabouts is your target market based? Use these questions to inform your keyword research. Tools such as Word Tracker will help you to identify less competitive keywords that are more specific to your offering.
Target the Long-Tail
Targeting the “long-tail” is a strategy that can often work very well for small businesses. The long-tail can be defined as the keywords which have low search volumes but with high intent. This is in opposition to the “head” of the tail which is defined as the keywords which have high search volumes but with low intent. Head keywords are 1 or 2 words long, “car insurance”, for example. Spending many thousands of pounds getting your website to page one on this term might be counter-productive. Yes, you might receive a lot of traffic but your sales conversion rate could be very low if your offering is not specific enough to the end user. “Long-tail” keywords are 4 or more words long, “car insurance for over 60s”, for example. The search volumes will be lower, but the user who searches on this term exhibits a much higher likelihood to purchase if your content is relevant to what they are searching for.
Keep Generating Relevant Content
In order to improve your chances of getting listed on Google you need to keep creating lots of useful, on-topic content. Useful, engaging and newsworthy content will help entice visitors to return to your site for updates. It will also increase the chances of other websites linking to you (an important element of SEO). Your content needs to be “on-topic” in the sense that it must reflect your core business services. So, for example, if you sell pet food, your website must feature content pertaining largely to pets and pet supplies. With a sensible keyword strategy in place you can then begin generating content built around the “long-tail” search. This could include articles on “pet food for small dogs”, product pages optimised on the term “quality pet food for cats” or blog posts about “the latest developments in pet food”. Over time, the search engines will begin to identify your site as delivering expertise in the area of pet food (or whatever your business might be) and, according to factors such as user behaviour on your website and how many other trusted websites link to your site, your website will eventually stand a much better chance of ranking on competitive “head” terms such as “pet food”. As previously mentioned, this is not a fast process. This can take months, possibly even years, of development work to achieve top page positions on competitive terms – especially if you’re on a low budget. So start by targeting the long-tail and be patient with regards to the high traffic keywords. These latter keywords can not be secured overnight.
Target Local Search
An obvious point but one often overlooked by small businesses is to target local search. If you run a cycle shop in Worthing, optimise your web pages geographically to target users searching for “cycle repair shop Worthing” or “cycle repair shop Sussex”. Again, make sure you use a keyword research tool such as Word Tracker, or run a Google AdWords campaign to determine the actual keywords people use to find local products or services.
Install a Blog on your Website
Some blog publishing platforms, such as Word Press, are very search engine friendly. Word Press, for example, can easily be optimised for the search engines with a few simple plug-ins that you can add to your site via FTP or the Word Press content management system. If your business is more service rather than product driven, blogging is an excellent way to develop the volume of pages on your site and increase your chances of getting indexed on niche keyword phrases. Once your site is established and “trusted” by the search engines it’s not impossible to achieve page one results in a matter of minutes for certain long-tail keyword combinations. Again, this is because search engines feed on new content and blogging platforms are designed to provide them with just that.
Combine Your Marketing Efforts
Many people view SEO as a standalone marketing activity, unconnected from other marketing efforts. It’s a mistake to think about it this way. SEO should, wherever possible, be integrated with your other activities. Online PR, social media networking, viral marketing, offline promotions and print advertising can all assist you with your attempts to rank better in the search engines if your campaigns are delivered in an enticing and efficient manner. One of the most crucial elements to SEO is in link-building (generating inbound links from trusted, on-topic websites). Getting in-bound links is not easy, but one method is to deploy a genuinely original, engaging, funny or useful piece of content on your website. For example, you could provide a free video game with a prize for the highest scoring winner. This kind of content, if marketed properly using some of the aforementioned techniques, will help you to generate links in from the blogosphere, local press, related websites and beyond. You need to deploy your content using other marketing methods as traditional SEO techniques will not necessarily create the immediate flow of links required to give your site a boost.
Install Analytics, Learn and Be Patient
Installing analytics on your website is crucial for several reasons. You need to be able to monitor the performance of individual pages on your site. If a particular page has a high “bounce rate” when arrived at using a specific keyword phrase, this indicates that your landing page is low in relevance, credibility or quality. Google and other search engines are able to detect high bounce rates which they will interpret as “the user came, did not like the content and left”. If many of your landing pages have high bounce rates it is essential that you work on developing the relevance, credibility and quality of your web pages. If you don’t do this you are unlikely to improve your positioning across the search engines. Google Analytics is free to install, however there are many other more sophisticated analytics tools on the market (at a cost) if you are looking for a more bespoke solution. These tools will help you to optimise your website performance and engage your visitors. Use these tools to learn, keep implementing the necessary changes, be patient, and over time you will see improvements.
For specific small business SEO enquiries, please get in touch with me via my contact page.
Most people are aware that successful search engine optimisation campaigns are determined by effective link building strategies. Despite significant changes to the search landscape in recent months, with the introduction of personalized search and real-time results, the fact remains that inbound links from high-quality, trusted websites will help you to rank better on your target keywords. Unfortunately, the fact also remains that link building is, to be perfectly honest, a difficult, time-consuming and often very tedious activity. However, there are some great resources out there that can help take away some of the pain. These include:
Link Building Introduction Guides
If you’re new to search engine marketing and you’re looking for ideas on how to go about instigating your own link building campaign there are several excellent walk-throughs out there to get you started. California based SEO guru, Aaron Wall, offers one of the most linked-to, link building guides on the web: “How to Build Links Fast“. With over 5000 links pointing to this post, this article is proof itself that building useful, detailed content will generate you links. Other excellent introductions include Saad Kamal’s “Link-Building: A Complete Walk-through” and the Search Engine Roundtable’s “Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques“; the latter’s unnecessary use of title hyperbole masks an excellent article.
Link Building Gurus
The majority of the established SEO “gurus” offer detailed resources, tools, advice and varying advanced strategies which you can find published on their websites or blogs. U.S based link building expert, Eric Ward, offers some great advice on his site. Multi-national organisations are known to consult Austrian based link marketer Christopher Cemper, who also offers some great advanced link analysis tools (see below). Debra Mastaler’s Link Spiel is packed full of engaging articles. Other recognized, “authorities” include Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land and Rand Fishkin’s SEOmoz.
Link Building Tools
Conducting successful SEO campaigns requires the use of efficient tools. Many SEO consultants use their own privately developed software, however there are some industry recognized tools that are worth investing in if you are new to search engine marketing and looking to conduct your own link building campaigns. SEO Powersuite and iBusiness Promoter’s link management tools are useful as “all-in-one” SEO packages. For browser based analysis it’s definately worth installing the SEO Toolbar, which offers a snapshot of page and domain link totals and much more besides. For advanced link analysis, Christopher Cemper’s Link Research Tools are highly recommended. Previously used privately by Christopher’s company, these tools are industry leading and offer an immense amount of detailed and valuable information, including analysis of common backlinks (comparing sites in your neighbourhood) and common outbound links (analysing where your competitor’s commonly link to). Ontolo’s link prospecting tools are also worth taking a look at here.
Networking and Events
Another way to generate inspiration for your link building campaigns is to network, attend the major search conferences and listen to the experts. AdTech and SEO Strategies and both worth signing up for. Several of the gurus named above discuss tactics on this open debate here.
Finally, you need to collate what you learn to determine the best strategy for building links. This will vary considerably from site to site, according to your niche, but if you follow best practice, stick to ethical methods and keep generating great content, you will eventually succeed in the search engines.
There is no such thing as a single, correct way in which to conduct an SEO campaign. Every SEO consultant, agency or in-house marketing team will have their own unique approach to the important stages in the process and, most of the time, these differing approaches are valid and effective. However, there are some unscrupulous SEO companies that continue to flout recognised best practice, utilizing “black hat” techniques and often causing more harm to their clients’ web properties than good. In order to be certain that you have the right SEO provider, it’s important to ask questions about their style and approach. My own SEO philosophy has developed from over five year’s experience delivering efficient and ethical campaigns. The important areas are, in my opinion, as follows:
Keyword Research
A clearly defined keyword (or key-phrase) strategy is absolutely crucial. New internet start-up businesses should pay close attention to this stage of the process before commissioning a website to be produced. Many people make the mistake of organising a website to be designed thinking that the optimisation of the site comes at a later stage. It’s important to consider your keywords right from the start as your website should be built with these in mind.
Site Architecture
A good SEO consultant should be able to advise you on the best approach for building a search friendly website. Issues such as site navigation schemes and URL structures can play a crucial part in enabling search engine spiders to index your site correctly. Design technologies such as CSS, Flash and Javascript can also present indexing issues so, again, an essential component of good SEO is ensuring that the technology is correct right from the start.
Site Audit and Competitor Research
Website owners with existing web properties that they’re looking to improve should expect a detailed site audit from their chosen SEO provider. The key areas include:
* Analysis of site architecture & internal linking
* Current rankings in the search engines
* Analysis of current indexed pages
* Duplicate content check
* URL structure & canonicalization
* Analysis of page mark-up and tags
* Page copy & content analysis
* Page Rank analysis
* Analysis of current in-bound links
A thorough site audit should be presented together with a competitor research report. This report should present a comparison between your website and your top competitors, looking at ranking factors such as domain age, Page Rank and in-bound links. This report should present a realistic perspective on the timeframes and probabilities for securing a page one result on your chosen keywords. If your current website is brand new, has no in-bound links and little content then you are not going to be able to acheive a page one result for a keyword such as “morgages” anytime soon (well, not without A LOT of financial investment!) Your SEO provider should be upfront about this and should advise you on a realistic strategy.
Content is King
The old cliché “content is king” is absolutely true and an especially important consideration in web development. Websites that are little more than holding pages will never rank well in the search engines beyond, perhaps, searches for the precise domain or website name. Search engines love content and better still, new content. It’s therefore important to put in place a strategy for building the volume of pages on your site and, in doing so, presenting genuinely useful and original content. The aim with any content marketing strategy should be to make your site the authoritative voice on your subject. So, if you run a landscaping business, for example, you should consider adding as much advice, news, gardening tips and examples of your work as possible. Over time, the consistent development of new content will help you to gain trust with the search engines as an authority on your subject which in turn will lead to natural in-bound links and better rankings.
Dynamic over Static Content
SEO is an on-going endeavour. As a result, websites need to be live, interactive and engaging. Web properties that engage with the principles of Web 2.0 are far more likely to succeed on the SEO front than those that don’t. This is because search engines like dynamic content such as blogs, news-feeds and social media engagement. A site that is regularly updated with useful content (where that content is made freely and easily available to share) will perform better than a site composed of static “info” pages that never change or engage with the wider web.
Optimise for the User not the Search Engines
In my opinion, SEO ought to be renamed SEUO after “search engine user optimisation”. Many people make the mistake of optimising their sites specifically for the search engines whilst considering the search engine user who discovers their site a secondary or subordinate issue. This approach is fundamentally wrong and defies the reason why search engines exist. The purpose of a search engine is to deliver the most relevant and useful content to a user. If your site content is optimised well for the search engines but is of a poor quality, this will eventually be detected. Google, for example, can identify user behaviour and bounce rates for specific sites and pages. If your site has a high bounce rate with users rarely exploring the content on your site beyond the landing page they arrive at, this will eventually be detected and will likely result in lower rankings. Similarly, any link-building endeavours should be engaged with the user in mind. Links from thematically unrelated sites to your site do not assist web users in their search for specific content. So, again, the user must be the centre of all optimisation activity.
Engaging Tags and On-Page Optimisation
Most people are aware that META tag information is an important element of SEO. Whilst this remains true, many people are unaware that the way in which these elements are optimised can affect issues such as CTR (Click Through Rate) and bounce rate (the volume of people who click off from your site without exploring it beyond the landing page). So, a cleverly optimised site will not only include your target keywords within the META tags but it will also provide useful, relevant and engaging hints to the search user about your content. If this is done correctly and if your landing page content is of high quality then your CTR rate will be higher and, respectively, your bounce rate will be lower.
Any on-page optimisation work needs to be carried out using professional SEO software. Using guess work to optimise your site will likely get you nowhere. Many SEO professionals use privately developed software, however there are a number of excellent tools available to purchase. Some of the market leading SEO software providers include: iBusinessPromoter (IBP) and SEO PowerSuite. These tools will help you to identify crucial on-page factors that require optimisation such as keyword density and page mark-up elements.
User Focused Link-Building Strategies
It’s well documented in the SEO community that the days of purchasing volume links to boost your site to the top of the engines are over. SEO providers who continue to make the claim that they can acheive fast results, cheaply through volume links should be treated with extreme caution. Just as it is with other elements of the SEO process, modern link-building strategies should focus on the user and the content. When sourcing links for your site consideration needs to be given to the value a potential link has for a user searching the net. If a user browses a website offering details of cheaper car insurance but s/he discovers that the site links out to websites offering cut-price washing machines, the chances are this site will not be favoured by the user. Links need to connect related information together otherwise they are of little value. Finding relevant link opportunities is a dull, tedious and time consuming task however, again, many SEO software providers offer tools to make this process more efficient. This software will also help you to analyse link value data quickly in order to avoid pursuing links that are of little value.
Another approach that I would recommend is to place a lot of emphasis on your content. Providing genuinely useful content that can’t be found elsewhere on the web is almost a guaranteed way to generate natural looking links that won’t get flagged up for looking “SPAM” like to the search engines. However, this is best supported by an element of viral marketing (for example, emailing a link out to all your contacts telling people to take a look at the useful content you’ve posted). Genuinely good content will then get forwarded on, posted on blogs, social media sites and third party websites.
Another strategy is to create content which is then hosted on third party sites or blogs. This method allows you greater control to dictate the anchor text used for your links (i.e. your target keywords). The key to this tactic is to, again, create great content (this is a theme running through my SEO philosophy!) Good quality content hosted on thematically relevant third party sites, with links embedded in the middle of that content using anchor text related to your keyword strategy, will definately help you to improve your rankings! However, caution needs to be taken not to duplicate the same content over hundreds of hosting sites. Equally important, the anchor text used must vary from site to site. 300 links to your site all using exactly the same anchor text (”cheaper car insurance”, for example) won’t look natural to the search engines. Links need to be unique, measured and user-focused. The quality of the links and the hosting sites is far more important than the volume of links.
Summary
I think this is the briefest overview I can give about my SEO philosophy! There are many advanced SEO techniques that I will attempt to write about in future posts. Just to summarise very quickly then:
* Use keyword research & competitor research as a basis for new campaigns
* Don’t consider SEO as an afterthought
* Expect a comprehensive audit & analysis from your SEO provider
* Be realistic with your campaign objectives
* Make great content central to your web development strategy
* Make your site a leading, authority site
* Dynamic, interactive and engaging sites over static sites
* Optimise your site for the user not the search engines
* Always use professional SEO software
* On-page optimisation should again be user focused
* Link-building work should again be user focused
Follow these pointers and you should acheive page one results on Google. SEO is, however, a time consuming activity. If you’re considering outsourcing any element, I can provide a competitive quote. For further details on this and search engine marketing generally, visit my contact page.
If you’re new to search engine marketing and don’t know where to begin I would recommend keyword research as a starting point. This applies to both existing website owners who are looking to increase the visibility of their site(s) as well as internet start-ups who are in the planning phase of a brand new site.
Keyword research is vital as it will help you to understand search engine user behaviour more accurately. You may think that you already know the terms that people are most likely to tap into a search engine to discover your website, however it is not recommended that you work on this assumption. The result of working this way can often lead to poorly targeted traffic and low sales conversion rates. Whilst working for my client, E3 Group (an entertainment booking agency), I created and optimised a web page aimed at event planners looking to book a comedian. I used various keyword tools to identify the terms most likely to result in leads for my client. I then tested these terms using paid search. Broad and generic keywords such as “comedians” resulted in a fairly significant amount of traffic but a very poor conversion rate. When you think about it, this is hardly surprising. People searching on the term “comedians” are doing so for a wide number of reasons. They could be looking for information on their favourite stand-up, they could be looking for video content to make them laugh, they could be looking for a guide to “what’s on” in terms of live comedy. They could be looking for a host of other things not connected to booking a comedian. Keyword research and experimentation with paid search enabled me to identify the terms most likely to generate targeted traffic and leads.
Keyword research is also vital because it enables you to assess both the volume of searches that are actually being carried out by search engine users and the competition that exists on your chosen terms. Research tools such as Wordtracker and Trellian both utilise the KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) to assist web marketers with their decisions on which terms to target. Using these tools and observing the KEI can often assist with discovering fairly high volume search terms with high-intent that are not being targeted as much by your competitors. Another example, again with E3 Group, is the search term “opera singers for weddings“. I discovered using keyword research tools that this term had a relatively high search volume but wasn’t being targeted by many of E3’s competitors. I created a blog on the subject and within a few days I put this term on page one of Google and the number one spot on Bing. This term now generates wedding enquiries for my client.
Once you have researched your keywords and created a definitive list of the ones you plan to target, the next step is to give some thought to keyword management. If you’re initially dealing with hundreds rather than thousands of keywords, an effective option for management could be to create a spreadsheet utilizing the tab function in order to seperate your categories. You can then order your keywords within each category according to whichever factors are most important to you, be it search volumes, KEI, intent, or any other factor you wish to add (obviously, most of this information you will have gleaned from tools such as the ones above). You’re then ready to start optimising your individual web pages using your research or, alternatively, cutting and pasting your category keywords into your PPC ad groups.
However, if you’re managing many thousands of keywords or you’re looking for a more dynamic solution for both keyword discovery and management there are some effective tools available online. Wordstream, for example, offer an intelligent, “next generation” approach to the issues faced by marketers dealing with vast amounts of keywords. This is worth considering although it does come with a price tag.
This brief introduction to keyword research and management is intended to offer the “basics”. For anyone serious about this subject and search engine optimisation issues generally I would strongly recommend downloading E-consultancy’s white paper “SEO Best Practice Guide“. It features a comprehensive section on “Keyphrase analysis and selection” together with all of the other key factors that should be considered in SEO. This is copyrighted information and can not be shared here, but access to the document is available through membership.
For those who work in the search marketing sector, the news everyone has been discussing recently is the proposed deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! The deal has created significant speculation in the USA, where Yahoo! has a much higher share of the search market than it does in the UK. The reports suggest that their respective engines combined will give them approximately 23% of the market share with Google dominating at around 74%. But how does this affect the search landscape in the UK?
Google's Search Share
In my opinion, there will be no dramatic change at all, at least for the foreseeable future. According to Statcounter Global, Google currently monopolizes UK searches; accounting for about 90% of them. Bing and Yahoo! combined are likely to take an initial 8% share over here (with approximately 2% of searches powered by other engines). So does the deal have any benefits for either advertisers or search marketers?
SEO Benefits
The obvious benefit that springs to mind is the fact that SEO consultants like myself will now only have to worry about optimising websites for the “big two” rather than “big three” engines. If the deal goes ahead (it is still pending a U.S governmental review), then as of next year all of Yahoo’s search results will be powered by Microsoft’s engine Bing. This is not good news for the smaller search engines who are trying to compete but, in my opinion, great news for advertisers looking to rank across the three main search platforms.
From my experience I have found it much easier to achieve page one results on Google and Bing. The technology behind Yahoo! seems to focus on pulling in data from its directory whereas both Google and Bing pay more attention to the META title tag. Interestingly, this has quite a dramatic effect on the end-user experience. Try using Michael Kordahi’s Blind Search tool, for example. This tool delivers search results from Google, Yahoo! and Bing but without letting you know which engine they are associated with. Nine times out of ten I find myself choosing either Google or Bing’s search offerings. In my opinion the technology behind Bing is far preferable to that of Yahoo! and will result in better SEO performance and campaigns.
PPC Benefits
Again, the obvious benefit for PPC campaigns will be the move from having to co-ordinate three account management platforms (AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft Ad Centre) to just two. There is talk also from Microsoft regarding the possibility of developed integration with AdWords enabling all PPC campaigns to be managed from one account interface. This instantly removes the frustration of managing platforms that deliver little or no traffic. In addition, the higher combined search volumes from Bing/Yahoo! will make the investment of account management time more worthwhile.
Today is officially my first day as a freelance business and marketing consultant and, whilst busying myself with this blog, I have also been conducting some SEO analysis work for my previous employer and first client, E3 Group.
I have been working on E3 Group’s SEO strategy for nearly four years now, securing page one results for competitive key-phrases such as “entertainment agencies” and “celebrity hire“. I have seen the number of visits to E3’s website quadruple over the last three years and I am currently compiling a report which indicates how, amongst other things, over 50% of the traffic is brought in by clickthrough from organic (”non-paid”) listings.
This increase in organic clickthrough has enabled me to advise my former employers that they can look at reducing their spend on paid search. Music to their ears and a nice start to my consultancy!
