Local SEO Montreal a search phrase that receives... by elliotSelick
Friday, September 16, 2011
Local SEO Tips
This is a great video explaining how to work wonders on your free Google Places listing. Good very easy to follow tips about using the free tool to get your websites and business well placed with Google's seven pack listing for local business searches.
Local SEO Montreal a search phrase that receives... by elliotSelick
Local SEO Montreal a search phrase that receives... by elliotSelick
Thursday, June 23, 2011
SEO Salisbury - Small Business SEO Basics
Do you have a website for your small business? Is it bringing you in sales leads? Can you find it in the search engine results for your brand name, key products or services?
The internet is now the key channel for people researching and purchasing products and services. If your website is not being found then it is like a car without petrol. It’s a nice thing to own but of little practical use.
Sites don’t appear at the top of the search result by accident. There are processes that all business no matter what size can follow in order to improve their rankings (position with the search results).
If you run a small business and have a website then you really need to have a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) processes and techniques.
I have attempted to collate some useful resources and links for small business owners to give you a basic beginner’s level understand of the process of SEO. I have broken these down into a few key sections.
These are:
· General SEO tips and advice
· SEO Keyword Research for Small Business Advice and tips
· Meta Data for SEO advice and guidelines
· On Page SEO Advice
· Free Small Business Link Building Advice
· Free SEO Tools
General Resources SEO tips and advice
The following links provide some great basic SEO tips and outlines. They look at basic SEO strategy and outlines the processes and order in which you should approach the search engine optimization for your website.
http://www.smallbusiness.co.uk/blogs/guest-blogger/1514528/social-media-seo-tips.thtml
http://welovebusiness.co.uk/a-guide-to-seo-for-small-businesses/
SEO Keyword Research for Small Business Advice and tips
Once you have an understanding of the basics of SEO the first part of the process is keyword research. You need to make sure that you are focussing your SEO effort on optimising your website for the correct keyword phrases and search terms. These links explain the keyword research process and the importance of long tail keywords in SEO.
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2010/06/keyword-research-tips/
Meta Data for SEO advice and guidelines
After you have completed the SEO keyword research for your website and made the selection for your keywords then the next stage is creating bespoke SEO meta data for the pages on your website. The following links explain the importance of the title, description and keyword tags in SEO and how to write good SEO focussed meta data.
Dublin Core Meta Data Guides
http://libguides.mit.edu/content.php?pid=158753&sid=1795676
Meta Data for Dummies
http://blog.hudsonhorizons.com/Article/What-is-Metadata-SEO-for-Dummies.htm
On Page SEO Advice Tutorials
Once the keyword research has been completed and meta data has been created for your website the next stage of the SEO process is to look at on page factors that can influence your rankings with the search engines. On page factors are those that you can control on your website such as the text, structure and coding of the webpages.
On page SEO Checklists
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-beginners-checklist-for-small-business-seo
http://www.seosmarty.com/on-page-seo-checklist/
Free Small Business Link Building Advice
Once you have your on page SEO complete with new Meta data, text and internal linking then it is time to move onto the most important and most difficult part of the SEO process. Link building in tandem with your on page SEO work will have the greatest positive influence on your search engine rankings. These articles explain the importance of links, the different metrics of links, including anchor text and how to look for and build links to your website.
http://smallbusinessshift.com/guides/link-building/
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/link-building-techniques-tips.html
Google Analytics
Once you have completed the SEO tasks and started on your link building it is important to have some metrics to measure the success of your SEO campaign. Google Analytics is a free tool and the industry standard for the analysis of website traffic.
These links will explain the basics of analytics and how to use them to measure the success of your SEO campaign.
http://www.google.com/analytics/
http://www.3232design.com/blog.cfm?id=24
Free SEO Tools
I have also rounded up some free online tools that will help you with your SEO campaigns.
Keyword Research
Google Keyword Tool – this will help you discover the keywords you need to focus on for your SEO campaign.
Meta Data and on Page Checks
What Google Sees – This tool shows you if your meta data is being read correctly by the google bot.
http://www.seoconsult.com/seo-tools/what-google-sees.html
Keyword Density Checker – This neat tool will show you the percentage of your keywords on any page of your website. Make sure you don’t stuff too many keywords into the text.
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/
Back Link Analysis
I have included what I feel are the three best free tools for analysis of your back link profiles that are currently available.
Yahoo site explorer – This is a great tool for discovering the number of backlinks to a website
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Push 2 Check – Push to check is a great tool for the analysis of a number of metrics, these include Google page rank and yahoo backlinks. One issue is that it only works with the homepage of a website.
Open Site Explorer – Open site explorer is a great free tool. It does limit the number of searches you can do until you open a free account. Its pulls in lots of data for you including anchor text and domains. It doesn’t update as regularly as the yahoo link database.
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
I hope you find these articles and tools useful and that they offer clear and easily understandable explanations for the basics of SEO for a small business website.
For professional SEO advice, campaigns and services in Salibury, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Somerset visit:
Moore Wilson New Media Salisbury
Tony Heywood 2011 ©
Friday, June 10, 2011
Google Panda Farmer Update and UK SEO
History of the Panda Update
If you work in online marketing or SEO you will already beware that a major change to the Google search algorithm was rolled out in the USA in the last week of February 2011. The update has been named Panda by Google and Farmer by the SEO community.
Google announced the update via a blog post on its official blog:
If you are a business owner with a website you might not be aware of the update and the effect it may have had on your website’s organic rankings and website traffic.
Why did Google implement the Panda Farmer update?
The aim of the update was to improve the quality of the search results and remove or at least downgrade the importance and the organic ranking of websites that are low in quality content. This is an attack on what are termed in SEO circles as “content farms”. Content farms are sites that have a high volume of content created by “users” on a large variety of topics. These content farms are often used by SEO professionals as a way of getting targeted backlinks to a site in order to gain good organic positions for long tail keywords searches.
The issue is that too much of the content on these sites lacks any real research, it’s poorly written and often short. The articles lack authority and tend to offer nothing new on the topic beyond a very basic understanding or outline. This content is often copied from the content farm and pasted on other websites (this is part of the publishing arrangement) and this process further weakens the authority and usefulness of the content.
The farmer panda update’s crackdown on poor quality content begs the question what metrics does Google use to grade content?
This is Google’s Matt Cutts from the Google Blog:
“…This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on…”
What is low Quality Content in Google’s Eyes?
So that means copied content and shallow content but what else?
The sites that have suffered as a result of the Farmer/Panda update also appear to have a number of other factors in common.
Although the changes are still working their way through the SERPS the SEO community seems to be coalescing around the idea that the following factors are important:
Negative Indicators for the Google Panda Update
• Traffic signals (high bounce rate, low pages views, low return visits)
• High percentage of boilerplate content. (Page content the same apart from one or two variables such as location and phone number that a changed on each page.)
• Lack of original content on homepage and rest of website.
• Page content that doesn’t match the search query for which they are found.
• Misleading Title tags.
• Keyword stuffing on pages.
• Link of external links.
• Lack of social media mentions.
• Over aggressive use of adverts.
• Poor design
Who were the Losers from the Google Panda Update?
http://www.sistrix.com/
The good people at Sistrix have provided some great data on the keyword visibility of a number of leading websites post Farmer in the USA.
The table below show’s that those hit hardest have been those that can loosely been termed content farms.
Wisegeek is a question and answer site, Ezinearticles is the best known of the article marketing websites, Suite101 is another article resource, Hubpages is collection of hosted marketing pages and Buzzle.com is the third article site in the top five.
The dramatic loss of keyword visibility for these sites will have had a massively negative effect on their traffic levels and ultimately there viability as online businesses. Losing 10% of your visibility would be hard to deal with but losing over 90%?
Will the Panda Farmer update effect the link profiles?
One of the major reasons for the existence of article sites is the ability to place related content with keyword focussed backlinks to third party sites. Content Farms are used as link resources for those looking to gain good organic rankings in the search engine results. The long term question from Panda/Farmer is the effect of the devaluing of these sites and their content and the effect this will have on the links placed with the content. Will these links become worthless? Will they have a negative effect on your rankings? Will they be seen as a spam signal?
Currently there is no data to suggest that links currently hosted on these sites have been negatively affected by the update. However it often takes months for Google to cache a link and pass the link value on to a site. It would make sense that the reverse is also true. We may not see the full impact of the update on link profiles and organic rankings for months. I have also seen it suggested that new links built on these sites will have little or no SEO value but this is speculation at this point.
If your websites backlink profile only contains links from content farms then you may well be heading down the rankings as the update works it ways through the index. Variety is the key and you should always look to build a varied backlink profile from a number of different sources using different anchors texts.
Google Panda and the UK SERPS
The full effects of the Google Panda update haven’t been felt in the google.co.uk search results at the time of writing this piece. There is mounting speculation that the update is being tweaked before it is rolled out beyond the US data centres and results pages.
If you monitor your websites rankings in google.com as well as google.co.uk you can compare pre and post farmer panda positions to gain an insight to what might happen with your rankings once the update is fully implemented in the UK. If your rankings have dropped dramatically in the google.com results then you will need to start addressing the issues raised by the farmer panda update as soon as you can.
Resources for Information
These are some of the top resources about the Google/Panda update:
http://www.stayonsearch.com/complete-guide-to-the-google-panda-update-50-articles-resources
http://search.searchengineland.com/search?w=google+panda
http://www.farmerpandaupdate.com/
Start your SEO campaign today.
At Moore-Wilson we have a dedicated SEO, Search Marketing and PPC team that can help you with all aspects of online promotion. We have a varied client base and you can view examples of our successful SEO work here. If you need advice on the Farmer/Panda update or you require a quote for SEO work for you company please contact:
If you work in online marketing or SEO you will already beware that a major change to the Google search algorithm was rolled out in the USA in the last week of February 2011. The update has been named Panda by Google and Farmer by the SEO community.
Google announced the update via a blog post on its official blog:
The blog post mentions that roughly 12% of the search results were effect by the change. That’s a fairly big shift in the search engine results pages (SERPS).
If you are a business owner with a website you might not be aware of the update and the effect it may have had on your website’s organic rankings and website traffic.
Why did Google implement the Panda Farmer update?
The aim of the update was to improve the quality of the search results and remove or at least downgrade the importance and the organic ranking of websites that are low in quality content. This is an attack on what are termed in SEO circles as “content farms”. Content farms are sites that have a high volume of content created by “users” on a large variety of topics. These content farms are often used by SEO professionals as a way of getting targeted backlinks to a site in order to gain good organic positions for long tail keywords searches.
The issue is that too much of the content on these sites lacks any real research, it’s poorly written and often short. The articles lack authority and tend to offer nothing new on the topic beyond a very basic understanding or outline. This content is often copied from the content farm and pasted on other websites (this is part of the publishing arrangement) and this process further weakens the authority and usefulness of the content.
The farmer panda update’s crackdown on poor quality content begs the question what metrics does Google use to grade content?
This is Google’s Matt Cutts from the Google Blog:
“…This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on…”
What is low Quality Content in Google’s Eyes?
So that means copied content and shallow content but what else?
The sites that have suffered as a result of the Farmer/Panda update also appear to have a number of other factors in common.
Although the changes are still working their way through the SERPS the SEO community seems to be coalescing around the idea that the following factors are important:
Negative Indicators for the Google Panda Update
• Traffic signals (high bounce rate, low pages views, low return visits)
• High percentage of boilerplate content. (Page content the same apart from one or two variables such as location and phone number that a changed on each page.)
• Lack of original content on homepage and rest of website.
• Page content that doesn’t match the search query for which they are found.
• Misleading Title tags.
• Keyword stuffing on pages.
• Link of external links.
• Lack of social media mentions.
• Over aggressive use of adverts.
• Poor design
Who were the Losers from the Google Panda Update?
http://www.sistrix.com/
The good people at Sistrix have provided some great data on the keyword visibility of a number of leading websites post Farmer in the USA.
The table below show’s that those hit hardest have been those that can loosely been termed content farms.
Wisegeek is a question and answer site, Ezinearticles is the best known of the article marketing websites, Suite101 is another article resource, Hubpages is collection of hosted marketing pages and Buzzle.com is the third article site in the top five.
The dramatic loss of keyword visibility for these sites will have had a massively negative effect on their traffic levels and ultimately there viability as online businesses. Losing 10% of your visibility would be hard to deal with but losing over 90%?
Will the Panda Farmer update effect the link profiles?
One of the major reasons for the existence of article sites is the ability to place related content with keyword focussed backlinks to third party sites. Content Farms are used as link resources for those looking to gain good organic rankings in the search engine results. The long term question from Panda/Farmer is the effect of the devaluing of these sites and their content and the effect this will have on the links placed with the content. Will these links become worthless? Will they have a negative effect on your rankings? Will they be seen as a spam signal?
Currently there is no data to suggest that links currently hosted on these sites have been negatively affected by the update. However it often takes months for Google to cache a link and pass the link value on to a site. It would make sense that the reverse is also true. We may not see the full impact of the update on link profiles and organic rankings for months. I have also seen it suggested that new links built on these sites will have little or no SEO value but this is speculation at this point.
If your websites backlink profile only contains links from content farms then you may well be heading down the rankings as the update works it ways through the index. Variety is the key and you should always look to build a varied backlink profile from a number of different sources using different anchors texts.
Google Panda and the UK SERPS
The full effects of the Google Panda update haven’t been felt in the google.co.uk search results at the time of writing this piece. There is mounting speculation that the update is being tweaked before it is rolled out beyond the US data centres and results pages.
If you monitor your websites rankings in google.com as well as google.co.uk you can compare pre and post farmer panda positions to gain an insight to what might happen with your rankings once the update is fully implemented in the UK. If your rankings have dropped dramatically in the google.com results then you will need to start addressing the issues raised by the farmer panda update as soon as you can.
Resources for Information
These are some of the top resources about the Google/Panda update:
http://www.stayonsearch.com/complete-guide-to-the-google-panda-update-50-articles-resources
http://search.searchengineland.com/search?w=google+panda
http://www.farmerpandaupdate.com/
Start your SEO campaign today.
At Moore-Wilson we have a dedicated SEO, Search Marketing and PPC team that can help you with all aspects of online promotion. We have a varied client base and you can view examples of our successful SEO work here. If you need advice on the Farmer/Panda update or you require a quote for SEO work for you company please contact:
Tony Heywood 2011©
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Google Suggest and SEO
Is Long Tail Dead? Google Suggest and Long Tail SEO.
The Google suggest function is now live on google.co.uk and has been live on Google.com since last autumn. The Google suggest tool automatically offers you search ideas based on the query string that is typed into the search box. It provides popular search queries in real time. So if you start to type in Italian R, then Google offers you the list below.
The big question is the effect that the suggest tool will have on SEO and the practice of optimising for long tail keywords. A long tail search tends to be three terms or longer and often includes a geographical location. These long tail searches are useful for bringing targeted traffic to a website. The longer a search query the closer the searcher is to making a purchasing decision. Will the suggestions provided by Google drastically reduce long tail traffic?
Location Location Location
The first issue to look at here is one of location. If your business is tied to a geographical location then you should already be using your location in your SEO strategy. If you own an Italian Restaurant in Glasgow or Manchester then it may be more difficult for you to SEO for these terms as more websites will began to chase these terms in the organic search results. If however you own an Italian Restaurant in Bath or Bristol then the process would remind the same.
Google Suggest and SEO
For those whose location appears in Google Suggest then I believe becoming more niche is the solution. The addition of a more local area as a keyword in your SEO development will result in more targeted traffic. There will be fewer sites optimised for Italian Restaurant Hulme than for Italian Restaurant Manchester. You may lose out on a percentage of general searches that may well have been looking for places in the wrong area of Manchester, but gain more visits from those looking for a service in your location. You shouldn’t ignore the phrases in Google suggest (include them in your title tag, meta tags and page content) but don’t get hung up on them. It is possible to SEO for both the larger geographic area or city and the more local location. The title tag could include “Italian Restaurant Hulme Manchester” and it covers both bases.
Don’t Get Blinded By Suggest
You also need to make sure that the terms in Google suggest match the content and services on offer on your website. Don’t get blinded by the terms suggested. If the start of your long term search query suggests a series of terms that you currently do not SEO for you should not panic.
If you run a make-up school then the results as you type in make up are displayed below.
Google Suggest and long tail
These searches may be the most popular in Google but they don’t match the services you offer. If you spend time and money on gaining good rankings for these terms then it will be money down the drain. It will only result in a high bounce rate with little ROI. You need to be bringing searchers to your site looking for the services you provide. If a search has always provided good levels of converted traffic there is no reason to believe that this will change as a result of Google suggest.
Searches are Intelligent
As internet searching has developed so has the length of the average search query. Most Google searches are now over four words. So it is vitally important not to get sucked into thinking the two word phrases in Google Suggest are the Holy Grail in terms of SEO and positioning in SERPS. It is also worth remembering that 25% of all Google Searches are new searches. These are search queries that haven’t been asked before. A percentage of these will be misspellings, something that Google Suggest will help to eliminate but not completely remove. If you focus primarily on the terms in Google suggest you will be neglecting the traffic that sits outside these narrow parameters.
Experienced internet users are now canny enough to know what type of search query returns the results they desire. They will continue to type in their preferred query, ignoring the suggestions provided by Google. The effect of the suggest tool in the Google Toolbar is limited unless it is expanded to fill more of the toolbar space as the suggestions tend to be truncated and unreadable. The Suggest tool also doesn’t currently function on the results page of Google it only works on the homepage. This means that any secondary searches will be in the old format without automatic suggestions. A large percentage of searches are carried out from this page and these will increase as Google Suggest returns the wrong kind of results for the user.
Undoubtedly Google Suggest will have an effect on the way in which people search. It would be fool hardy not to include the relevant suggested terms in your SEO strategy but they should not form the focus of your online marketing. I firmly believe much like,Mark Twain, that the death of the long tail keyword has been greatly exaggerated.
Tony Heywood ©
The Google suggest function is now live on google.co.uk and has been live on Google.com since last autumn. The Google suggest tool automatically offers you search ideas based on the query string that is typed into the search box. It provides popular search queries in real time. So if you start to type in Italian R, then Google offers you the list below.
The big question is the effect that the suggest tool will have on SEO and the practice of optimising for long tail keywords. A long tail search tends to be three terms or longer and often includes a geographical location. These long tail searches are useful for bringing targeted traffic to a website. The longer a search query the closer the searcher is to making a purchasing decision. Will the suggestions provided by Google drastically reduce long tail traffic?
Location Location Location
The first issue to look at here is one of location. If your business is tied to a geographical location then you should already be using your location in your SEO strategy. If you own an Italian Restaurant in Glasgow or Manchester then it may be more difficult for you to SEO for these terms as more websites will began to chase these terms in the organic search results. If however you own an Italian Restaurant in Bath or Bristol then the process would remind the same.
Google Suggest and SEO
For those whose location appears in Google Suggest then I believe becoming more niche is the solution. The addition of a more local area as a keyword in your SEO development will result in more targeted traffic. There will be fewer sites optimised for Italian Restaurant Hulme than for Italian Restaurant Manchester. You may lose out on a percentage of general searches that may well have been looking for places in the wrong area of Manchester, but gain more visits from those looking for a service in your location. You shouldn’t ignore the phrases in Google suggest (include them in your title tag, meta tags and page content) but don’t get hung up on them. It is possible to SEO for both the larger geographic area or city and the more local location. The title tag could include “Italian Restaurant Hulme Manchester” and it covers both bases.
Don’t Get Blinded By Suggest
You also need to make sure that the terms in Google suggest match the content and services on offer on your website. Don’t get blinded by the terms suggested. If the start of your long term search query suggests a series of terms that you currently do not SEO for you should not panic.
If you run a make-up school then the results as you type in make up are displayed below.
Google Suggest and long tail
These searches may be the most popular in Google but they don’t match the services you offer. If you spend time and money on gaining good rankings for these terms then it will be money down the drain. It will only result in a high bounce rate with little ROI. You need to be bringing searchers to your site looking for the services you provide. If a search has always provided good levels of converted traffic there is no reason to believe that this will change as a result of Google suggest.
Searches are Intelligent
As internet searching has developed so has the length of the average search query. Most Google searches are now over four words. So it is vitally important not to get sucked into thinking the two word phrases in Google Suggest are the Holy Grail in terms of SEO and positioning in SERPS. It is also worth remembering that 25% of all Google Searches are new searches. These are search queries that haven’t been asked before. A percentage of these will be misspellings, something that Google Suggest will help to eliminate but not completely remove. If you focus primarily on the terms in Google suggest you will be neglecting the traffic that sits outside these narrow parameters.
Experienced internet users are now canny enough to know what type of search query returns the results they desire. They will continue to type in their preferred query, ignoring the suggestions provided by Google. The effect of the suggest tool in the Google Toolbar is limited unless it is expanded to fill more of the toolbar space as the suggestions tend to be truncated and unreadable. The Suggest tool also doesn’t currently function on the results page of Google it only works on the homepage. This means that any secondary searches will be in the old format without automatic suggestions. A large percentage of searches are carried out from this page and these will increase as Google Suggest returns the wrong kind of results for the user.
Undoubtedly Google Suggest will have an effect on the way in which people search. It would be fool hardy not to include the relevant suggested terms in your SEO strategy but they should not form the focus of your online marketing. I firmly believe much like,Mark Twain, that the death of the long tail keyword has been greatly exaggerated.
Tony Heywood ©
Friday, July 11, 2008
Google Data Centre Checker
Have you ever wondered when talking to a client about the results pages in google that they get different results than you.
This is usually down to the fact that the results are not being returned from the same data centre. Google has a large number of data centres across the globe and they do not update in a completely synchronized way.
A search for SEO Salisbury was returning a number of different results. These results became more concrete over the course of a week as the data centres updated in a chain. By the end of the week my search for SEO Salisbury or Web Design Salisbury had settled down.
The google data centre checker is on the right hand side of the blog.
Tony Heywood (C)
Monday, June 23, 2008
All in Anchor Command in Google - Smart Search
The all in anchor text is a very powerful tool for finding those websites that are using anchor text that you are attempting to optimise for.
The command is all "allinanchor:keyword"
For SEO Salisbury the general search returned 174,000 results.
For allinanchor:SEO salisbury the search returned 104,000 results.
I am looking to optimise for Moore Wilson Search Department - SEO Salisbury
The command is all "allinanchor:keyword"
For SEO Salisbury the general search returned 174,000 results.
For allinanchor:SEO salisbury the search returned 104,000 results.
I am looking to optimise for Moore Wilson Search Department - SEO Salisbury
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