February 1, 2015 by EziSell - 0 comments

The Importance of Unique Relevant Content

No matter what type of website you have, for Internet Marketing there are 3 words that mean more than anything else

Content is King

These three words should be remembered at all times and used as a reminder that on site SEO (search engine optimisation) is just as important as off site SEO for two particular reasons:

Search engines do assess the quality of content and it can elevate your rankings

It is ultimately what will impress potential customers and encourage them to buy.

Although we are talking about improving your search engine rankings in this email, the second point is an important one to remember because your website should still be designed with your customers in mind. Online marketing should take care of the search engines.

The content you need is…

a) High quality,
b) Unique to your site
c) Relevant to the products and services you are attempting to sell. If it does not check all three points then you are getting it wrong.

High quality content will not be crammed with keywords but will instead contain keywords scattered in the text to remind search engines of its purpose. It will be well written, make sense and be completely unique.
Unique content is exactly what the label suggests so it should be written specifically for your site rather than copied from someone else’s site. There are tools you can use to make sure that your content is unique so investing in one of them may not be a bad idea.

Finally, the content on your site should always be relevant to the topic in question. For example; if you sell hardware goods then putting up content about women’s fashion is not a good idea. So what difference does it make?

Most people that are new to maintaining a website will dismiss content as one of the last things they need to worry about but this is simply not the case. Having relevant and unique content on your site can make a world of difference to your rankings. It fulfils many of the criteria set by search engine algorithm for high ranking and can also help to draw traffic to your site.

After all, visitors need to be able to find what they are looking for.

With all of this in mind, you really must take the time to look at the content on your site. You need to make sure that it is of a high quality as well as being unique and relevant. However, there is another aspect of content that you absolutely MUST consider.

The concept of fresh content Fresh content is not a difficult concept to grasp. In fact, it is pretty simple to understand so you should have no difficulty with it. It is literally adding more articles, information and other such content to your site on a regular basis.

There are plenty of ways that you can add fresh content on a regular basis but there are some that are more popular than others. For example, most major sites have a blog or an article section that content is added to whereas others choose to have an RSS feed added. Whichever you decide to do, you should update it at least once a month if not once a week to achieve the results you want.

Why add fresh content?

Now you know what fresh content is and how to add it, you need to consider why you need to put the time and effort in. Well, it is primarily to attract two things to your website:

Spiders -No, not the eight legged kind but rather the search engine kind. Spiders crawl your site to update your ranking periodically based on the content there. If you do not update your site then a search engine may well visit less frequently in future. If you update it regularly then you will find that spiders drop by and your rankings change on a more regular basis.

Humans – If you want to build trust and invite visitors to come back again and again then fresh content is the way to do it. It gives the impression that your customers mean a lot to you and can keep your visitor number and conversion rates high.

There is one other point that should be made about adding fresh content on a regular basis and that is the overall effect it has on your site. It helps to build authority. The more relevant and fresh content you add, the greater the authority your website seems to have on the topic. This not only improves your ranking but also increases the number of other people and companies that are willing to link to you.

January 25, 2015 by EziSell - 0 comments

On Page SEO – Keywords, Content and Site

For your site to have a great ranking you need to consider not just the meta data, but also take into account the actual content you add to your site and the site layout in general.

Keywords

We have already gone over the importance of having interesting, regular content added to your site. However each piece of content you create should also have a purpose.

Once way to do this is to create content that includes relevant keywords throughout the copy. The two main things to consider for this is density and placement.

Keyword Density

Basically you need to have your keyword appear enough times to make the search engines recognize it is important. Google recommends a keyword density of 1-2% and Yahoo recommends a keyword density of 3%. If you go too much over it may be considered ‘Keyword Spamming’ and will probably harm your SEO efforts.

The best way is to write high quality website copy that is entertaining and engaging. The art of SEO writing is nowhere near as valuable as it once was.

Keyword Placement

This is more important than your keyword density. It is a good idea to have you keyword in:

Title tag of your website
Header area of your copy (H1 tag)
If possible also bold the keyword in your text to emphasize them – as long as it looks natural.

Having your keywords or key phrases towards the top of your copy and very close to each other (just a word or two apart) will make them appear to be significant in relation to each other.

Outbound Links

Yes incoming links to your site are important, but did you also know that outbound links are also just as important. These links act like a vote from your site towards the sites you are linking to, however try not to go too over boards and only include a couple of links per page. It is also important to use keyword rich anchor text, and to only include links that are relevant to your site’s subject matter.

Like everything SEO related, if you go too over board with outbound links by having too many, or include ‘spammy’ / unrelated links you can seriously harm your brand. If you have a blog with a comments area try to make them all ‘nofollow’ as Google will see you are trying to not include them in your page.

Links are normally dofollow which means search engines like Google sees them and will take note of the page you are linking to when working out your SEO ranking. Nofollow is the opposite and tells the search engines that you do not want these links to be indexed with your site. Basically you are not voting for the page the link goes to.

Images

Search engines can not tell what an image is so they have to take a best guess by using the detail you provide them. This means they are a very effective SEO tool. Rename the image to your keyword, add in the alt text / description / title of the image.

Note that these descriptions are displayed if a user mouses over the image – or if the images do not load so make sure they are still natural and of course not spammy.

The Sitemap

Every site should have a sitemap. A site map contains a list of every page on your site, and can contain details of how often a search engine should crawl them (i.e. how often you update them). Google and Bing both use sitemaps to help them find all the pages on a website, and also to get an idea of when to re-crawl old pages.

Adding a sitemap is one of the easiest ways to ensure that your content is being checked by the search engines on a regular basis.

Your URLs

Make sure that you URL (or URL slug) makes sense and are ‘pretty’. Again it should be relevant to your page, contains your keyword and makes sense. The url is generally displayed underneath your result in the search engine results page so the keywords and text that you enter is very important.

In the long term, the ranking and traffic benefits of having attractive URL slugs will pay off.

Internal Links

The last thing to consider is internal page linking. If you create a piece of content that relates to another piece already on your site, take the time to cross-link them. This is great for SEO but is also important to help with your actual engagement. If a person is reading your text and sees a relevant link going to another relevant area on your site, they will probably click to read it as well.

Make sure you do pay attention to the text you use on this link – try not to make it say ‘Read More’ instead use the new articles keyword so Google can again see how it relates to your site

If you need a hand with getting your on page SEO correct get in touch. It is one of the most important things you can do to make sure your site succeeds

January 20, 2015 by EziSell - 0 comments

On-Page SEO Techniques – Meta Data That Produces Results

Just how important are the right on-page SEO techniques?

Consider them to be like the foundation of a house. After all, you can’t move in all of your furniture and put artwork up on the walls if your home doesn’t have a solid foundation to start with. And, you can’t have a successful off-page SEO strategy without the right foundation on each of your pages.

While you may have heard about countless on-page SEO techniques, there are 3 that you need to be taking advantage of right now:

1. Your meta tags
They may not look exciting – after all, most of them are just source code that most people never see – but meta tags are the most important of all your on-page SEO techniques.

Why?

When the search engine spiders crawl your website, they have no idea what it’s actually about. The only way they can tell what your site is about is to read your meta tags. If they’re not optimized properly – or, worse, not optimized at all – the spiders will be confused. And if the spiders don’t know what you’re all about, they won’t know where to rank you – and you’ll wind up being non-existent in the search engine results.

Luckily, if your meta tags aren’t up to par, they’re easy to fix. You can make everything better with just a quick trip into your website’s source code.

2. Your title tags
Your title tags is the most important meta tags on your website because both humans and search engine spiders see them. In fact, your title tags are usually the very first thing that people and spiders see!

Title tags have existed since the earliest versions of HTML, and search engines still rely on them today. The title tag appears above your site’s description in the search results as a clickable hyperlink. You can include 60 characters in the title tag – if they are longer than this the search engine will truncate the title, and show an ellipsis at the end to indicate that the full title is not being shown.

You need to create your title tags carefully. Most of the time, your title tag is going to be the clickable part of your search engine results listing, so you will need to fit your main keywords in it (again, so that the spiders know exactly what your page is about) – while also coming up with a title tag that’s interesting enough for actual humans to click on.

It can be difficult to fit all of that into 60 characters, but with practice you will learn to make short, punchy and eye-catching headlines. It is worth taking the time to make your headlines as appealing as possible because they are the first thing that people see in the SERPs. A good headline will dramatically improve your CTR.

3. Your description tags
This is usually what’s used as the little summary displayed in the search engine results, so, again, you’ll have to come up with something that’s catchy to both humans and spiders.
However, this on-page SEO technique is a little tricky, because the search engines aren’t required to use your description tags in their results. Many times, they pick other snippets of your text to use as that little summary. That’s not a good thing, though, because you may wind up with incomplete sentences or sentences that aren’t catchy enough to attract clicks.

TOP TIP – HOW TO CREATE A GREAT DESCRIPTION

Did you know that the page description does not have anything to do with rankings or SEO – it is purely for the user?

This means you need to think of what you want displayed and make sure it is catchy but most of all readable. Most people simply slap the keyword in the description, after all the person searching will see the keyword they just search for in your description and will probably click on it to find out more.

But if this does not look natural, or make sense it will just be awkward and skipped over.

Do you want to know a great secret on how to really create a great looking description, one that has already been proven to work?

Go to Google and search for the keyword your article is about

Don’t look at the other sites already listed, but look at the PPC advertisers.

The top PPC Advertisers spend a boat load of money and the best ones continually split test their copy to make sure it works.

Look at the top few advertisers and combine them to make a killer description that you know works.

You will be surprised how many people skip over the importance of the description field, most look so bad that no one clicks them. After all a top ranking page link is pointless unless you entice people to click on it..

Importance of Meta Keywords

10 years ago they may have been highly relevant – however after people used them to stuff hundreds of spammy keywords in there, the search engines stopped using them…

Google decided to stop using them way back in September 2009.

TIME SAVING TIP

Skip the keyword meta tag as Google and almost every other search engine does not use them.

If you have a page that you spent loads of time cramming every keyword you could think of – go remove them – it may be harming your sites rankings

Dont beleive us, check out these videos from the Web Spam Team at Google

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7IPbnmvVU

Another good video about meta tags in general

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBTBEfd7z_Y

January 15, 2015 by EziSell - 0 comments

What is On Page SEO?

Do you want more web traffic? Are you failing to reach your ideal online customer base? If you think that your online success could do with a boost, then you may want to start by improving your SEO.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is first and foremost about making your website easy to find. By following a number of fairly standard steps you can ensure that your site has a prominent place in the search engines when prospective customers carry out a search for the things that you’re selling. The important distinction here is that your site needs to be reaching people who are searching not only for your business, but also those who are searching for the products or services you are selling.

If your business sells French Provincial Style Furniture it is important that the search engines recognise what your business is about, not just your business name. SEO helps to pinpoint key word phrases that your customers use to search with. This ensures that your website is correctly indexed and ranked to reflect its relevance to the phrase being targeted. A good outcome from SEO is that your site will rank highly when a potential customer runs a search using a targeted phrase (e.g. ‘French provincial style furniture’).

SEO helps to clarify what your site is about, so that when a search engine comes to index your site, it does so correctly. Through good SEO practices, you’ll find that your site moves up through the pages; ranking more highly for appropriate phrases. Your site then becomes easier for prospective customers to find.Some of the simplest steps can make a big difference to how your site ranks; which, in turn can have a big impact on the amount of traffic reaching your site.

Boosting your search engine ranking for the most appropriate phrases will also ensure that the traffic you receive is largely from qualified visitors to your site. When your webpage ranks highly for appropriate, targeted phrases you’ll be able to not only increase the numbers ofprospects on your site, you’ll be confident that those who do reach your site will be genuinely interested. Having a large number of visitors is somewhat pointless if they land on your site and then leave less than 10 seconds later. Relevance is a big part of SEO and it ensures that your web traffic consists of a greater number of visitors with a genuine enthusiasm and interest in your products and services.

January 2, 2015 by EziSell

What’s New for Internet Marketing in 2015?

So, right about now your newsfeed is probably littered with predictions for internet marketing in 2015, ringing in the New Year with “insider knowledge” in your pocket, blah, blah, baitclick. What a drastic change from each one of the past ten New Years blog trends, no? Do you want to know what is going to happen with internet marketing next year in no uncertain terms: the same thing that is happening right now.

The Most Exciting Prediction in the World

Here it is: trends are going to continue; they are not going to reverse. Things that are working right now are going to continue to work and slightly change as the weeks turn into months. Things that are not working any more will stop being used. If something new comes out that works, people will start to move towards that tool/technique.

Brilliant, no? Actually, what I’m really trying to get at here is that the current trends are only going to get more in-depth. And as for new trends, you’re going to have to keep your ear to the ground and your eyes to blogs to follow them. Don’t rely on a once a year prediction blog to set your internet marketing strategy for 2015, this is the age of real time pivoting and actionable metrics. If you aren’t plugged in 24/7, you’re run the risk of missing out on something big and falling behind.

If Marketing Trends Were Ponies Which Would I Bet On?

But if you are really dying to know what I think about the marketing trends that will be the hottest in this upcoming year, I guess I can put in some picks for you, but as I said, your best gauge for next year’s success is your own intuition and your own research. After all, isn’t it your money and livelihood on the line?

– Mobile marketing will continue to be on the top of everyone’s “must” list but honestly, unless you’re running a huge website, I’m going to go ahead and tell the truth: every one has been predicting this trend for the past four or five years. When are we “there” and not “striving for there” already? If your site isn’t mobile-friendly by now, chances are you’re not in business.

– SEO will continue to be blurred along with content creation and social media. What we have now is a digital marketing operation that is focused on driving traffic and sales. Or conversions. Or whatever you want to call them. The point is, the once finely delineated departments of internet marketing are all lumped together. Watch for this mixed cauldron to continue to be stirred until unrecognizable as separate entities.

– Content will still be king. SEO will still be dead. Everybody will continue to say it and argue about it, but the fact remains that the more quality content you have that is written for your customers and not for search engines the better ranking and sales you will have.

– Metrics and analytics will continue to be super-important as well real-time pivoting, so if you aren’t paying attention to what customer behavior yet, your time is rapidly drawing near to being “too late.”

Now, before you say there was nothing of value there, remember what I said earlier. You are the only one who can bring value to your internet marketing and it’s not going to come from the predictions of a quick email on 2015 internet marketing trends. I don’t care who writes it, the fact of the matter is, you have to pay attention year round if you want to get to the heart of the matter.