Increasing Web Profits through Search Engine Optimisation

So how do you increase Internet traffic to your web site? Here are three proven, time-tested methods for generating targeted web site traffic:
* Search Engine Marketing: Optimise Your Web Site for Search Engines. Search engine optimisation ( SEO ) is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Meta-information includes HTML tags (title, heading, emphasized text, keyword and description meta-tags), as well as the internal (links between pages on the same site) and external (links between pages on different sites) link structure of a web site. Using good keywords to optimise your web site for search engines such as google, MSN & Yahoo helps you bring targeted traffic to your web site.
* Create a Business Blog. This is an excellent tool to aid in the search engine optimisation process and to let the world know about your new products, and tell your target customers why they should do business with you, rather than your competitor.
Syndicating (allowing other web sites to reprint) your articles also helps you build traffic to your web site and is an excellent SEO / SEM tool. The terms of use of your article state that reprinting in any form is allowed only if the site that uses the article includes a resource box. A resource box is a block of text that appears after the article. It typically consists of 2-4 sentences that include your bio and a link back to your business web site.

Search Engine Optimistation Project crawled by MSN

A success for Organic search engine optimisation (SEO) was recorded today as the Ameliorate website - Search Engine Optimisation UK's sister site - was crawled the same day it was uploaded by both MSN & Yahoo! We await crawling from Google ...

The 7 Deadly Sins of SEO

Starters in Search Engine Optimisation, in their zest to increase their site's Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking, commit some mistakes which drastically affect their Website's position on search engines. The following is a list of 7 common mistakes, which need to be avoided when optimising Web pages.
Ignoring the Title Tag; Irrelevant Keywords; Spamming - unethical & not good SEO practice!; Invisible Text & Links; Links to and from Bad Sites; Invalid HTML; Having too many graphics.

For further advice on the importance of Search Engine Marketing to your business, contact Search Engine Optimisation specialists at howell.seo@gmail.com.

Crawled by Google!

This Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) UK Blog has now been crawled by all 3 major search engines. Google was the last one to crawl it and that happened a mere 7 days after initial creation! Quite a result for organic search engine marketing.

Organic Search Engine Marketing - optimisation specialists update!

The following is an extract from a J Hedger article, which gives SEO specialists advice and analyses the current position for (organic) Search Engine Marketing specialists:
Organic search engine placement now requires a lot more work on our part and on the part of our clients or their webmasters. Content needs to be updated regularly, navigation simplified and shared analysis of on-site traffic is increasingly important. Top10 websites, especially around their main entry points, have become production pieces requiring a greater degree of strategic planning than the general, annually updated brochure sites do. Creation of that content needs to be considered a standing business expense though that expense should be more than made up for in long-term advertising savings.
While Google is making it easier for search marketers and advertisers, its goal is obviously to make itself more money by increasing click-through rates while collecting user data from the millions of websites signing up with the service. It has also provided SEOs with a dashboard view of critical factors involved with how it ranks sites.
The practice of search engine optimization has in some ways become more difficult but in others, has actually gotten easier. SEO has come a log way since its early days in the mid 1990's. A decade ago, SEOs were considered secretive and manipulative cowboys, roughneck mercenaries who would (because they could) do just about anything to get a site ranked in the Top10 on the major engines of the time. There were more search engines along with a variety of directories, spidered databases such as Inktomi that sold results to other engines.
This switch, combined with the rapid growth of the Web necessitated better search algorithms and a crackdown on manipulative search marketers. At the same time, the SEO and SEM sectors have seen tremendous growth due mostly to a shift towards paid-search marketing by major advertisers and the attendant growth of interest in Google, Yahoo and MSN. The (organic) search engine marketing sector has doubled or perhaps tripled in size in just twenty-four months as new practitioners were hired by established SEO firms or forming their own businesses. Many of those new practitioners have spent that time absorbing and adding to the huge volume of information that makes up the SEO sector's knowledge base.
Those SEO specialists are coming of age, professionally speaking, and are very good at what they do. Organic search engine marketing and these new SEO skills are going to be an important asset to the sector in the coming year as the business of search expands way beyond the desktop and into everyday life. Change is good.

Blackberry Gets Google Talk and Google Local

An interesting development for Search Engine Optimisation Specialists was reported by Reuters on 13th Jan as Google and Research in Motion(RIM.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) - maker of the Blackberry mobile device - have announced an agreement that will put Google Local Search, Maps and Google Talk software onto new Blackberry devices. Google has now released a free software download, Local for Mobile, that enables Blackberry users to access its local business search, satellite mapping and route plotting services. A similar download enabling text messaging through Google Talk will be made available in the early spring. Both pieces of software will be standard features built into new RIM Blackberry devices.

Google is the world's leading Internet search company but a latecomer in instant messaging, where it lags Time Warner's, AOL, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research).

What does this mean for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Specialists? That the more this software is developed and used by the public, the greater the need for local business to optimise their websites. People will be performing a greater number of searches through their mobile devices and therefore the organic search engine marketing strategies that SEO specialists employ will be of particular importance and relevance to all local businesses.

Social Comment Tagging becoming an essential element in Organic Search Engine Optimisation

Yahoo Acquires WebJay
Yahoo has purchased WebJay, a service built on user-compiled playlists. Along with buying the company, Yahoo has also hired (former) WebJay owner Lucas Gonze .
According to the Yahoo Music Blog, WebJay allows users to "create playlists using music/audio/video from around the Web (with a simple Web form, from scraping a Web page, or with a fancy Ajax interface created by a 3rd party using Webjay APIs), share them with others, include them on their Web sites, browse other users playlists, play the playlists in any media player, or cannibalize the playlists to create new ones."
This acquisition marks a further move into the music distribution business for Yahoo and another leap towards social comment tagging as an essential element in search optimization says the article in SEO news.

Latest SEO News: Google takes market from Yahoo

Recent SEO information: Google Takes "Overseas" Market from Yahoo
Fortune Magazine reports Google has overtaken Yahoo in Europe and other "overseas" markets, according to an advisor's note to Bear Stearns clients. Using numbers acquired from comScore, Robert Peck from Bear Stearns said Google's international market share rose to 71.3% in November from 68.9% the previous month. Google's growth rate almost doubled the rate of the rest of the search industry.
"The bulk of the market share gains came mainly at the expense of Yahoo! and MSN who both lost market share," Peck wrote in a note to clients .
"We believe that Google should continue to capture market share as it benefits from increased press coverage and product improvements and launches which are driving searches on Google.com," Peck said.
(info source: Forbes.com )
For Search Engine Optimisation Specialists, this is particularly interesting as this does impact on the SEO marketing strategies and campaigns for our clients.

Search Engine Optimisation - Key SEO optimisation strategies

As a Search Engine Optimisation Specialist, keen on improving our industry, it is important to share good practice...
What is key in optimising a website?
Good design - Navigation around the website should be easy with clear architecture and simple, clean layout. Flash animation is hard for crawlers (Google, MSN, Yahoo spiders) to read - even the macromedia website doesn't use Flash as it interferes with optimisation ... an interesting observation for SEO specialists - so offer an HTML alternative of the same content from the homepage. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are a good alternative to Flash or tables. Site maps give crawlers access to parts they might miss. Designers should avoid session IDs and other 'infinite pages' like calendars that can 'trap' crawlers. Also avoid overlong and complex URLs.
Relevant content - The maxim 'content is king' is repeated by marketers and search engine optimisation specialists alike. More content, frequently updated is best, but only when focused on a theme. Corporate keywords that define the company and its products or services should focus on that theme, and should also be used in page titles - the phrase running along the top of a web browser - which search engines take as the most important way to understand a site and which many sites waste with a welcome message. These should be limited to the 75 characters that show up on search results pages. HTML tags or meta-tags should also use keywords, but web sites built to comply with accessibility standards http://www.w3.org/WAI/ will already include these. Analyst group Forrester recommends choosing keywords based on customer 'personas' and search terms that already deliver visitors.

Worlds Largest Companies missing out on £billions through failing to pay attention to SEO!

The world’s largest companies are missing out on billions of online pounds by failing to optimise their websites for search engine listings, according to an article by Tim Bradshaw at infoconomy. http://www.infoconomy.com
Search engine rankings (and therefore search engine optimisation) are a vital component of an Internet presence: More than three quarters of hits on Internet home pages are directed there via a search engine; and half of consumers research online prior to making purchases. But many of the world's largest businesses are failing to take advantage of this growing channel for acquiring customers.
Analyst group IDC says that £4 billion was spent online in the UK in 2004, making up 7% of all retail sales. But analysis of user behaviour suggests that many search engine users never scroll down the screen to look at lower ranking results. This leaves a narrow window of just half a dozen results. Anything outside the top 30 results is essentially invisible - though contrary to popular myth, 'eye-tracking' has found the first two rankings are both seen equally.
Worryingly, there appears to be little understanding of the importance of search engine ranking by leading businesses. Research by Screen Pages, a provider of managed ecommerce services, found that less than a third of 18 UK high street retailers' websites it surveyed had broad coverage on Google, Yahoo or MSN; only half showed evidence of a basic search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy; and less than a quarter had "high-street grade" page ranks - Google's measure of site importance. Another study, by search engine marketing company Oneupweb, found that only one in eight of the Fortune 100's websites were adequately optimised for web searches....
So, who says search engine optimisation is dying? A focused marketing campaign using PPC, where appropriate, plus organic links is vital for all web businesses.
For further advice, comment and information about the world of Search Engine Optimisation, please email me at howell.seo@gmail.com

Organic Search Optimisation vs Sponsored Results

Sponsored links are marketed as a sure-fire way to lure consumers to specific Web sites, but a Penn State study shows most online shoppers don't take the bait. "Consumers have a bias against the links that businesses pay search engines to provide," said Jim Jansen, assistant professor in the Penn State School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). "By themselves, sponsored links appear not to be a viable business model and should be only one part of an online advertising campaign." According to recent reports, businesses spent an estimated $8 billion to sell their products and services via sponsored links in 2004, despite little evidence that such advertising successfully directs traffic to Web sites. More likely to hook consumers are the organic search results or those results returned automatically by the algorithmic operations of the search engine, Jansen said.
Please refer to Search Engine Marketing Specialists Blog for further readings and advice on this. Google and other search engines also provide advice as to how it is important to have sponsored links in the initial period of an internet business, however, it is far more important to have a search engine optimisation strategy for long term to benefit from ROI and better market penetration.

Integrity within the SEO industry is key for clients

Web businesses require optimisation to score highly in the organic search results. However, integrity from the search engine optimisation specialists is of paramount importance for our industry to facilitate trust; business and an enhanced ROI for the internet community. Google has some interesting links and cautionary tales about SEO and some particularly aggressive search engine marketing specialists! http://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/seo.html

Crawled by search engines...

This Search Engine Optimisation UK Blog has been crawled on both 1st and 2nd Jan by MSN, awaiting crawling by Google and Yahoo.

Search Engine Optimisation: PPC

Reports state that Pay Per Click bid inflation was 16% in 2004, it will be interesting to SEO specialists the inflation rate for 2005 when released by the Search Engines.

Search Engine Marketing - click traffic / organic graph

Check out Search Engine Marketing specialist, David Burdon's, latest blog entry & graph on where click traffic originates from in relation to organic standings in the search engine results pages (SERPs)! http://www.simplyclicks.com/SEO-Ranking-Test.pdf