What is SEO or Search engine optimization?
SEO or Search engine optimization comprises of a number of strategies used with the aim of improving the ranking of your website in the major search engine listings like Google. It is an important part of your overall marketing strategy if you want to sell your products online.
SEO (Search Engine Optimizers) as we are dubbed in the industry are a group of consultants who carry out optimization on web sites for clients.
White hat SEO Optimization
White hat SEO is Search engine optimization using tactics approved of by search engines. This kind of SEO may involve increasing the relevant content on a site or improving internal and external linking strategies. In many cases small improvements can really make the difference between getting a site seen and it dropping off in the search engine rankings. We would always recommend looking at White Hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization) before using any black hat methods.
Some popular techniques used by SEO white hat people
Getting a good URL (Domain Name for your business)
Including the right keywords in your URL can be the difference between getting high search engine rankings and not getting high search engine rankings. This is more important today than it was when companies like Amazon or Google were started because there is much more competition now than there was ten years ago.
For example, one of my sites http://www.researchbureau.co.uk/ has a very high ranking for the search term Research Bureau, in fact it is currently number one out of 161,000,000 sites listed for the phrase, but we are digital publishers and if you type in digital publishing, we are not placed well in that category, many of the companies that are have the phrase digital publishing embedded in their URL.
This is the kind of thing you only learn about by trying new things and rest assured I will eventually purchase a digital publishing URL for that site.
URL or domain name research – Contact Us Now – Don’t waste valuable time on trail and error let us look for the right URL for your site.
Keyword research
Keyword research involves finding the most popular keywords used by you target audience to find the products you sell. One major rookie mistake made in most web design is that designers include a lot of industry jargon on the client’s site. They do this because the client won’t sign off on the site until they see the phases and terminology they want to use up there. The thing is that when the customer comes along to look for a product they tend to use non technical terms. A customer see a bin as being a bin, a bin manufacturer may see a bin as a waste management receptacle. They are both correct but waste management receptacle sellers may find customers thin on the ground, people who sell bins will probably do ok.
If you get your keywords right you will go into the search engines index for the words that match the products you want to be found for. This will have the knock on effect of attracting more link partners, which will in turn boost your rankings again. As you go higher up the rankings you will start to get links from people who don’t even want a link back and then you are starting to build a viable online presence.
My advice is that if you want good stable search engine rankings that you gained honestly and can’t be taken away keywords are the best place to start looking for them.
We have a special software we can use to look at your overall keyword strategy for you and help you make adjustments to your site, so you reach the audience you are aiming for.
Linking Strategy
Internal linking strategy and SEO or Search engine optimization
How you link your website together will have a lot to do with how many of your pages appear on major search engines. In Google’s page rank system a link is seen as a vote for a page from another page. The factors that combined give high search engine rankings are the number of links to your page weighed against the quality of the pages that are linked to it. With some feedback on the number of people who click through to your page from Google. If you get high rankings on a page and no one ever clicks on it probably won’t stay up the top of the search engines for long.
Internal linking is one of the few things you can control from the very start of your Internet Site Idea. If you take my advice you won’t build anything until you have worked out your best keywords because putting the right keywords in your internal link text and images will have a big effect your rankings. The more keywords you use on your Internal linking the more people using automated programs to spot keyword partners and site links will include your site in their listings which in turn get picked by larger search engines and included in their listings. This has the knock on effect of raising your profile on the major search engines.
External linking strategy and Search engine optimization (SEO)
The sites that link to you and the sites that link to you are of vital importance to your search engine rankings. A good external linking strategy would see you only linking to sites that would help you get better rankings. It is difficult to pick the right sites to link to without having an overall outcome in mind for what you want.
Planning is the key to White hat SEO Optimization
I love Tom Peters the American business writer, he single handedly convinced me to open my own business, but when he talks about how new business is all about being disorganized he is wrong. It is more important than ever to have a five year plan for your Internet site and I am going to tell you below how I would map out my first five years if I had it to do over.
1. Year One – You have found an idea you find appealing, stay in your job while you research your potential market, you like it but will people pay for it, how much will they pay, how do they look for your product on and off line. Once you know all this buy the domain name with the right keywords and have me build you a simple html site that also uses the right keywords so you can sell maybe one product, pack your site with informational articles and promotional stuff about your product and find events where you can go along and give out business cards and talk to your target audience about your product. You are building the buzz about your company in your niche market and your rankings will steadily build in the search engines, you will find that because your new company isn’t huge yet you can get links from people who do not yet consider you competition. Year one is all about your real world presence, if you don’t want to be promoting your site then don’t buy it because nothing will happen in the first year on its own.
2. Year Two – Lets change that site to a much more professional one, I will add a message board to let people interact with your site, then I will maybe add a chat room if you want so people can talk to you live, and possibly add a shopping cart and or auction software so you can sell more products. You will really focus on your stats, what pages on your site are bringing in the the punters, and what pagers are switching them off. As well as you real world marketing and networking, run adverts in local papers and trade magazines and run only one at a time keeping note of which ones increase visitors to your site. Try each publication for one month. At the end of this year you will know what adverts make you money and what adverts cost you money.
3. Year Three – Your search engine ranking have gone up because you used the right keywords, and got the right links. You are starting to make money now, you can afford to advertise in the national papers and glossy magazines, you still run only one ad campaign at a time and watch your site figures, you are still going to seminars and giving out your business cards, your are chatting to punters online on your message board and still doing all your real world marketing. You may even decide to go round shopping centres with a trade stand to raise your profile.
4. Year Four – You can now afford to hire people to do the stuff you were doing and because you now know how to do each part of the marketing process yourself you will be able to spot good talkers from good doers. You may want to hire a PR company to handle your advertising and marketing, but you will always need to watch what they plan to do with your money because you have spent the previous four years learning what works and doesn’t work in the real world.
5. Year five – Congratulations, if all has went to plan you now have a viable business and at least a little bit of security. You can go into your bank now and the bank manager is more nervous about the meeting than you are. You have arrived.
So white hat SEO has its good points and if you want to build a business that lasts my advice is to hire our company to build you keyword relevant, traffic generating sites, but don’t expect that to be all you have to do to make money on the Internet.
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Black Hat SEO or Search Engine Optimization
First things first, we do not condone the use of black hat SEO to trick search engines into thinking you are selling something you are not or to trick Internet surfers into going to sites where the content is of an adult nature when the don’t want to see it and will be offended by it. That being said if you run a flash site and you wish to get hits most of the tactics you will actually be able to use will involve the use of black techniques.
The major tricks used by black hat Search Engine Optimization people
Spamdexing
This is really a so last decade some may say almost pre millennium way of getting more hits. It involves creating thousands of pages with keywords repeated over and over again in the vague hope that search engines won’t see them. With the advances in technology spamdexing is all but useless these days. However it may have the unexpected knock on effect of getting the site owner banned from most modern search engines altogether.
Cloaking
Cloaking is when you deliver one page to a search engine and another page to surfers. It is usually based on a combination of IP address tracking and robots text file checking and some of the systems out there today are very good, but remember you get what you pay for.
Is cloaking evil?
I will take a stand here and say that cloaking has its place. If you have a flash site or even if you run a content management system you could well find your site doesn’t make much of an impression on search engine listings.
One great example of a site that will never make an impression is one where all the content is behind a password protected home page. Since search engines can’t get past the password the site is not indexed and your hard work will not be seen. In my estimation it is fair play to show the search engines your un password protected pages and then divert you visitors to your password protected front page. After all search engines make companies pay for advertising and marketing on them, and so why shouldn’t a company make people pay for their content. I can say with certainty that most large internet companies use cloaking to some degree.
Since listing on search engines is automatic and search engine owners will never view your site themselves it could be hard or impossible to remedy poor rankings without taking matters into your own hands. Surely all forms of SEO is an attempt to manipulate rankings and what methods you use to get the end result are irrelevant.
If you want to get cloaking for your site to misrepresent some aspect of your company then I believe it is wrong to do so and we would not provide a cloaking service for you, however it you want to get cloaking to cover a limited number of keywords that are relevant to your business and your site would be of interest to the group of people who search for those keywords then we would be happy to help arrange that for you.
