Archive for the ‘search engine optimisation’ Category

A fantastic blog by Karl Harvard this week on econsultancy.com talks about how SEO is evolving from just keywords and content. Off site optimisation such as blogging and contributing to other social networks.

A social media engagement strategy is now key in terms of SEO for clients. The key is getting clients to buy into this and accept this as part of an SEO strategy. With SEO, there is a distinct skill in writing optimised content and being able to code effectively for SEO. With social media marketing, its all about research and time - making sure that you put the effort in and that you are selective in where you put the effort in.

The theory of themes still runs true - if you run a site that sells gardening equipment, make sure you post on other sites within your genre. Relevant quality traffic is what you want, and building a picture of your site being a regular contributer to popular relevant content sites is key.

Social Media Marketing as we term it here, is the area we expect to grow the most over the next 12 months, and its long and short term benefits towards your overall SEO strategy should not be overlooked.

Not too sure about the goal hanger term though Karl. Where I come from it was called a “jonny liner”, presumably because a lad called Jonny was obsessed with standing on the goal line…

Traffic Online Marketing are a Leeds based online marketing agency. We are a specialised team who focus purely on online marketing. Our approach is to focus on our strengths and ensure that we deliver online marketing campaigns that meet your business goals and objectives. From experience, we know that digital marketing requires in-depth technical and marketing knowledge rather than general knowledge. That is why more leading brands are trusting Traffic Online Marketing to grow their online presence.

We are located in the centre of Leeds close to the railway station and main motorways enabling us to service our clients nationwide.

We are currently looking for an energetic and self-motivated account manager to join us. As Account Manager, you will join a successful team of highly skilled individuals who are dedicated to the care and development of a number of client accounts.

Based in Leeds, you will be responsible for project managing digital and search-specific marketing campaigns.

Key Experience Required:

* Proven Track Record of managing, creating and developing SEO and PPC Marketing Campaigns
* Ability to Build Effective and Long-Standing Relationships with clients and partners alike
* Expertise in setting up an managing social media, comparison shopping and affiliate campaigns
* An Understanding of Web Development and Design

This is a key role within the company and will require you to liaise with internal departments and clients effectively. Helping to shape and manage budgets, time-scales and campaign strategy, you will have a sound knowledge of all things search and digital.

Package:

Starting basic salary: £20,000 upward depending on experience
Holidays: 25 per year pro rata (excluding bank holidays, with at least 3 days to be taken at Xmas)
Full time 9 - 5:30 working hours, Mon - Fri

For more information on the company, visit www.traffic-om.co.uk

Interested applicants should send a CV and covering letter to steve@traffic-om.co.uk

** Strictly No Agencies - any agencies who contact us regarding this role will be invoiced for our time **

A recent post about writing content for SEO sparked a thought about generally writing website copy…

In every case with a new website, we tell clients to make sure they write compelling copy, and even look at hiring a copywriter. Most copywriters we have worked with have heard about SEO, but are not always sure how to write good optimised copy. Give them a list of keywords and phrases however, and the copy comes back keyword rich and focused on the user. This is exactly the balance everyone should aim for.

All content on the website must be interesting to humans, and as such should be written for them. Its all well and good getting web content ranking highly in search engines, only for users to visit the content and find it dull and uninspiring. This will not encourage the user to carry out the action you want, whether it be a sign up, a purchase or whatever. It’s kind of like walking into a store which you have seen a great advert for only to find the store is hard to find your way around, or the staff are unhelpful. It’s not going to inspire you to do what the advert set out to do.

A study this week highlighted how major US companies are failing to take advantage of organic search. It’s well documented that blue chip business invest heavily in paid search, but the figures this study unearths are more than enough to raise an eyebrow. A staggering $51 million is spent by Fortune 500 companies on paid search per day, on around 85,000 keywords.

Looking at how these businesses perform on organic search should make fairly depressing reading for marketing directors of these businesses. Just over 10% showed a strong visibility in organic search results, with this defined as having presence in the top 100 total organic search terms and a rank in the top 30 results.

Just imagine what these business could achieve through online marketing if 10% of their yearly paid search budget was apportioned to natural search! The old chesnut of “no one searches for our brand online” (a phrase I have heard far too many times from major UK businesses through the years) no longer applies. By actively investing in paid search, these businesses are stating their intent to attract more visitors to their website. There are contrasting opinions about how many search engine users click on paid results compared to organic results, but we have always worked on a 80:20 split in favour of organic. Does this not make this look even more appealing for these businesses?

We can only assume that this type of assessment holds true of equivalent UK businesses. If this is the case then such companies should take heed of this report. The right SEO strategy can work wonders for any business - and we have the results to prove it! Not only have we increased traffic to our clients websites via SEO, but we have also managed to reduce paid search spend, whilst increasing conversions from the same campaign! This has to be the target for any business serious about gaining an ROI via search marketing.

Online retailers in the UK have been pushed in recent times to improve their website’s accessibility characteristics. Everyone knows about the River Island debacle, and since this, many of our favourite high street names have stepped up their efforts to make their site accessible to all.

But what other benefits are there to improve your website’s accessibility? Well for one, improving this will almost certainly result in an increased effectiveness in your quest for search engine optimisation perfection!

Take something as simple as providing a replication of text links on your website if your website uses an image or Javascript based navigation. When a search engine comes to visit your website, it can now access these pages that were previously “hidden” from its spiders due to the way the navigation worked. This means they have more chance of including these pages in the search engine results, which means people have more chance of finding them, visiting your site, making an enquiry etc.

In fact, when looking at the W3C standards a good majority of them are relevant when it comes to basic search engine optimisation. So improving your websites accessibility will help your SEO in the long term. Carrying these improvements out will make your website more “accessible” overall.

The next step on from accessibility is usability. Again usability practices and good search engine optimisation can be very similar. Providing deep links into internal web pages to allow website users to access more relevant content is good usability practice, but also helps your internal site architecture which in turn impacts on your website’s SEO.

So although the implementing improved accessibility and usability on your website can be a bit of an upheavel, your website’s long term prospects for search engine optimisation will be improved.