Articles by topic: SEO blog

Does your hosting affect your SEO?

The cost of web hosting can range dramatically in price, from £1.99 per month to hundreds of pounds. When times are hard it’s very tempting to go for the cheapest option, but is buying cheap web hosting actually a false economy? Even worse, could it actually be costing you money!?

When looking into your hosting provider, it’s always worth checking out feedback from other users.  Additionally, it’s worth checking out the uptime of the servers. Google records everytime your site is down, and having a low uptime (or an uptime of less than 97%) can be potentially damaging to your SEO campaign.  You can check out the hosts with the best uptime at this link:

http://uptime.besthostratings.com/webhosts-uptime.php

It’s possible to get cheaper deals if you buy your server abroad from countries such as the US or India, but you have to take into account the speed of your server. Although having a slow website won’t directly affect your rankings, it makes it harder for Googlebot to go through your site, and having slow loading times can lead to a high bounce rate. Ulitimately if your bounce rate is high, your conversions are going to be low which will cost you money.

If hosting seems irresistably cheap, check the geographic location of the server and also make sure it’s not just part of reseller package. You may be purchasing webspace from a teenager working out of his bedroom at weekends!  Ultimately the service you receive if you use any of these providers isn’t going to be great should you need any assistance.

Depending on how serious you are about your SEO campaign and the content of your site, it is worth investing money into decent web hosting. In most cases, a standard, mid price range host will be satisfactory for your SEO needs - but do some digging before you commit to ensure you get the best value for your money.

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Page rank 10 websites!

While explaining and demonstrating the importance of Page Rank to a client this morning, the first question they asked was:

“Are there any websites with a Page Rank of 10?”

Initially, I was unsure - I thought Google Search would be ranked quite highly (!) and I knew the BBC website had a page rank of about 9 last time I had looked. After a bit of research, I have found out that there are in fact 5 websites that have a Page Rank of 10 (based on the 31st December 2008). This list was compiled just one day after a Page Rank update in which a number of Page Rank 10 websites dropped to a Page Rank of 9. Google has now switched from monthly Page Rank updates to Quarterly updates, so there should not be another change again now until the end of March.

So here’s the list:

  • Google Search
  • The W3C CSS Validation Service
  • US Goverment website
  • Adobe - Adobe Flash Player
  • National Portal of India

So as you can imagine, the next question was:

“How do you get a Page Rank of 10?”

Well the short and simple answer is though link building. For a Page Rank of 10 you would need a large quantity of good quality, relevant inbound links to your site. Every link to your site has an associated quality score based on relevance and the quality of the site. Links from .edu and .gov websites are deemed very high quality as these are difficult to obtain, as are links from human edited directories such as DMOZ. As the client currently had a Page Rank of 0, I said it may be some time and a lot of work before their Page Rank increases. Google will notice sudden spikes in the amount of links to your site if your purchase links or automatically sign up to 100’s of directories. The best way to naturally increase the quantity and quality of links to your site is through article submission.

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Twitter and SEO

twitter-logo

More and more people are talking about Twitter. As I was driving into work this morning listening to my local radio station even the presenter was using Twitter! As he was talking about it live on the radio nearly 100 users signed up to his updates. This got me thinking about Twitter and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)…

This year everyone is predicting that social media is going to a major contributing factor in SEO. So how will Twitter help your SEO campaign?

Well to get the most out of Twitter, you need to utilise it’s strengths. Some people say that it can’t be used to drive traffic effectively to your site. I would probably disagree with this comment, although I would say that there are more effective methods of driving traffic to your site that will be a better use of your time. It can’t be used for building backlinks either so it’s not going to affect your Page Rank. Additionally, if you use it for sending out marketing messages and updates that are clearly just advertising, people aren’t going to follow you.

So how will it help your SEO campaign? You use it to reach like minded people that you normally wouldn’t have the same level of access to. This will enable your site to become “socially aware” as you use Twitter for marketing purposes, and not only push messages to you target audience but aim to get them to respond. Creating this dialogue with your target audience can be a very effective marketing tool.

So while you’re thinking about who you can reach, and who you want to view, why not find out what the President of the United States of America is thinking…

Barack Obama Twitter page

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Search engine friendly domain names

b-and-q-diy-2

When deciding on a domain name for a website it is important to take a number of factors into account. A good domain name can have a big impact on the success of a website. Your URL is the first full text block that a search engine will see, so in terms of keyword promince this is very high importance.

David Viney (the SEO expert) says:

You may have read on SEO forums that keyword-rich domain names are a waste of time, that users see them as spammy, and that brand presence is more important. As usual, there is some truth in all these arguments, but recognise that if you choose to follow this advice you are opting not to use one of the most powerful SEO tools at your disposal.

Indeed, if you try typing in search terms in Google, more often than not the highest ranking sites will have matching keywords in their domain name. B&Q have notably used a new domain of “diy.com”. The old domains “bq.co.uk” and “bandq.co.uk” now re-direct to this main domain, and unsurprisingly they are ranked number 1 in Google for the keyword “diy”.

Hugh Boyle (head of digital for Europe, Middle East and Asia at Ogilvy Action) said of B&Qs decision to buy and use this domain name:

It’s brilliant. What it is saying is, B&Q is DIY. It’s a clear statement of market leadership and of confidence.

It is also important to consider the use of hyphens within the domain. Google sees hyphens as natural spaces or separators, although some argue that hyphenated names are harder to remember, and that Google can read the keywords from long strings anyway. However, I think the following domains could certainly benefit from hypens in the domain in order to avoid any confusion (although I find them quite amusing!):

Experts Exchange
www.expertsexchange.com

Pen Island
www.penisland.com

Both of these domains could have avoided any confusion, issue by using hyphens, i.e. www.experts-exchange.com. Ultimately, having a keyword rich domain in conjunction with your company name domain could help increase the organic ranking of your site, and ultimately increase site traffic. If you think that there are not many keyword rich domains left anymore, check out the hyphenated equivalents and I think you’ll be surprised by the results.

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The SEO Rapper

The SEO Rapper (aka the poetic prophet) is a youtube video of Chuck Lewis, a gospel hip hop rapper who really knows his stuff when it comes to search engine optimisation. For those of you that haven’t heard of him, check out this video:

This is just one of the many rap songs he’s created about SEO. How he makes rhymes and half decent song about search engine optimisation, and remains technically accurate I’ll never know. Chuck now takes parts in quite large SEO seminars, and you can purchase MP3’s of his songs or even buy his CD! His tracks include:

  • Link Building 101
  • Social Media Addiction
  • Paid Search 101
  • Design Coding
  • Conversion Closing

Keep it real. :)

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