Articles by topic: SEO tips and advice

Tracking backlinks and directory submissions with Google Docs

link-tracking-spreadsheet

If you’re reponsible for creating backlinks to a website, such as submitting the site to directories, requesting a link or reciprocal link from a similar website etc it is good practice to make sure you keep records of all your activity. This is especially important if you’re not the only person responsible for doing this! A good method is to use a spreadsheet within Google Docs, which allows the same spreadsheet to be used simultaneously by multiple users in real time. Editing a document using Google Docs is much more efficient than most document management systems as it allows everyone to work from the same document at the same time, and even see what your colleague is typing!

The spreadsheet above has 4 columns:

  1. The URL of the website or directory that you are trying to get to link to your site
  2. The date you submitted your URL or contacted the site webmaster 
  3. The status of the request, which we have as either ‘Pending’, ‘Approved’ or ‘Failed’
  4. Any useful information or notes associated with the request, that may serve as a reminder or can provide instructions to other users

There are many other columns which you can add that you may think are useful and can help you assess the quality of the links. For example, useful columns might include:

  1. Page Rank (PR) of the page the link to your site is on
  2. The number of other links on the page
  3. The date the link was added to the site
  4. Type of link (i.e. directory, direct, reciprocal etc)

The more information you include, the stronger your records will be. However, the flipside is that the more information you need to fill in, the longer the process will take! It is also possible to ’sort’ the information, so once you have compiled a large list you can sort the data by i.e. status, date submitted, page rank etc.

Similar to Microsoft Excel, you can also change the format of cells with ‘rules’, using ‘conditional formatting’.  This allows you to review the status of your requests with just a quick glance using different colour schemes for each status type. For example, entering the string ‘Pending’ into the status column automatically makes the text bold and changes the background colour to a light orange.

Although this process may seem like a lot of work, ultimately it will save you time and effort and also any potential embarrassment by contacting the same webmasters repeatedly!

Comments (0)

Ideas for blog posts

A common question we get asked when explaining the many benefits of integrating a blog into a clients website is, “what do we write about?”.  Well here are just a few things that you can write about:

Industry news (current events)

Writing about the latest industry news is a great way to get more relevant traffic to your website. As well as writing about events, make sure that you add your own comments and thoughts to make the article unique. Whatever happens, make sure that you don’t just copy and paste from other blogs / news pages or you could end up with content duplication issues!

Personal experience

People are always interested in personal experiences, especially within business. For example, this very blog is based upon my own experience with clients that are new to SEO. Providing this information in this kind of context is very useful to helping other users understand the importance of what you’re writing about, or trying to achieve as a business.

Top 10

If you’re ever stuck for something to write about, a top 10 list is a great blog to write. If I’m looking for a good website, I will also search for other peoples top 10 lists. I like to see their recommendations, and these lists will show that you know the industry well. For example, a web design agency might list their favourite top 10 websites for a particular year, which will provide their readers with an indication of the level of quality and how uptodate they are.

Advice and tips

Some people may advise against putting advice and tips on a blog. After all, why would you give users tips for performing the service you’re charging for? Another way of perceiving this, is that by providing tips and advice you will be perceived as an expert within the industry, which in turn will lead to more business enquiries. You don’t have to give away all your secrets, but showing that you know what you’re talking about is definitely a plus.

If you don’t have a blog on your website, you’re potentially missing out on having unique, regularly updated content added to your site which is a key part of your SEO campaign. To find out more about blog integration, you can contact Elevator or read more on this site.

Comments (0)

Optimising your page for keywords

It seems one of the main problems companies have when trying to optimise their page, is with their keywords. A classic mistake is that they will have hundreds of keywords rammed into their meta description. Some of these keywords will be single words with little or no relevancy to the company on their own! Additionally, the same keywords and meta description as then repeated on every single page.

Other companies who know a little a bit about SEO, or who have been ill advised (find out more about the dangers of DIY SEO) include the keyword wherever possible in the page. This includes the title, H1 tag, umpteen times in their content, and at every possible link and ALT tag for images. As such they end up with a keyword density of up to 50%!! A search engine will normally see a keyword density of over 10% as keyword stuffing, and as such will penalise sites for this.

Here are some simple guidelines you can follow for optimising your page for your chosen keywords.

  1. Ideally your site will have site-wide keywords and page specific keywords
  2. Try and optimise each page for one keyword, with a maximum of 6 keyword per page
  3. If you include your keyword in the page title and h1 tag, and at least once in your content - that’s 90% of the job complete!
  4. Keywords should all be in lowercase and separated with commas (no spaces)
  5. Use the most relevant keywords first
  6. You can emphasise the importance of a keyword by using the <strong> or <italic> tags on the first appearance of the keyword in the content
  7. Aim for a keyword density of about 2-4%

If you need more information or have specific questions about your keywords, then contact us.

Comments (0)

Guidelines for SEO content writing

There are lots of things to consider when writing content for your website. Arguably the most important aspect is successfully deploying your keywords.

Once you have completed your keyword research and analysis, you need to deploy your keywords into your site content. The main thing to remember is that this content is intended for a human user, not the search engine. This means that your end content should be readable, and definitely NOT written for a search engine robot. David Viney (a well known SEO expert) states:

The acid test is if it reads well for a human user. If it does and follows the three basic rules (prominence, proximity, and density) then the search engine spiders (robot browsers, also known as crawlers, or Googlebots on Google) will love you. If, alternatively, your keyword stuffing would make a user laugh (or cry), then you are running the very real risk of failure.

The three basic rules for deploying your keywords, as mentioned earlier, are:

  • keyword prominence
  • keyword proximity
  • keyword density

Keyword prominence, in the absence of HTML markup, refers to how words at the front of the analysed text is deemed more important than text further away from the front. Consider these two page title formats:

  1. Company name - Service
  2. Service - Company name

In terms of prominence, the first title puts the prominence on the company name. If this was the only factor involved the site would rank higher for the company name, and vice-versa for the second title. Additionally, keywords should be included within the following elements:

  • pages titles
  • heading tags
  • body content
  • ALT tags

Page titles and h1 tags have the greatest onpage ranking, as does the first paragraph of your body text. The ALT tags are arguably of much less value, however we would recommend using every opportunity to include your chosen keywords.

Keyword proximity refers to how close your keywords that make up your keyphrases are to each other. It is not always possible to have your keyphrases written out and still have good, readable content. However, where possible these keywords should be kept as close together as possible and preferably in the right order.

Keyword density is the remaining factor search engines use to determine keyword importance. The aim is to have a density of around 2-4% for each keyphrase - anymore than that and your site will start to look suspicious (appear as a SPAM site to a search engine robot) and you could be penalised for keyword stuffing. To check your keyword density there are many free tools available on the web such as this one:

Keyword density tool

Additionally, you should try and get 100% density in important elements such as your h1 titles. Consider these 2 titles:

  1. Huge selection of mobile phones
  2. Mobile phones

If the keyword is “mobile phones”, the first title has a density of 40% compared to the second which has a density of 100%.

SEO content writing is a specialised skill, and you often have to strike a balance between how far you optimise your content for search engines and how readable the content is. For static pages we would recommend using an SEO content writer or consultant, as this can make a big difference to your site traffic and conversions.

Comments (0)

Why should I include meta descriptions?

The meta data can contain lots of information about a website, however we recommend using at least the meta description and meta keywords. These should be used on every page of your site; however you should not duplicate this content, as this is at best a missed opportunity. Due to spammer abuse over the years, it is argued that meta-keyword tags have little or no bearing with improving your search engine position with Google. However, some search engines do still take them into account so it is definitely a worthwhile task.

Additionally, descriptions are used by some search engines in the snippet of information below the link on SERPs, and can include valuable ‘call to actions’ for the user. Some directories also use this information as the description for your entry. A missing description can leave your search results looking isolated and incomplete in search engines like Yahoo.

Comments (0)
  • Page 2 of 2
  • <
  • 1
  • 2