4 ways you can improve your businesses onsite SEO

Introduction

Let’s be fair, sometimes when reading through the blog posts that most SEO agencies write, its normally about really complicated SEO stuff.

For example, seo companies may write out really detailed articles about how to build backlinks for businesses that operate within competitive business sectors.

Yet with that said sometimes business owners just want to hear about different ways they can implement SEO easily.

Now if you were to ask most digital marketing agencies which are the different ways a business can improve their SEO easily; well they reply that seo is rarely that easy.

And this would be quite true. The reason is implementing good quality seo normally takes up a lot of time.

However, with that said, there are a few ways that SEO can often be implemented easily, and within this blog post we are going to look at four of these ways.

Add a meta title and meta description to each page

Now ask any seo expert and they are bound to say why suggest adding meta titles and meta descriptions as a way of improving a businesses SEO- they are not an important part of the SEO process!

Well this is kind of true, they are no where near as important as say as good quality backlinks are.

Yet with that said we think meta titles and meta descriptions are still really crucial, and here’s why we think that.

Let’s say you are shopping around online as you wish to purchase a brand-new washing machine.

You know how many KG washing machine you want, and you know how much you are willing to spend.

Yet there are so many businesses that sell washing machines, and when your looking on Google there are so many organic business listing to choose from. So, which one should you choose?

Well there may well be one business that grabs your interest, why is that so? Well, it might be because instantly written into the meta title and description you can see that this business seems to be offering you a really good deal, for example they state:

Meta title: We offer free delivery, we also offer a price guarantee on all new washing machines

Meta description: We offer free returns and free delivery on all washing machines, we also offer a price guarantee on all new washing machines.

Now this is of course just an example of what a business may write as a meta title or meta description for their website, yet it may well be written in such a way it encourages someone to choose that business, rather than all the other businesses on the first page of Google that also sell washing machines.

So, your business should spend time writing meta titles and meta descriptions for each page on your website.

Keep visitors on your website for longer

Your SEO company may get thousands of people onto your website every single day, yet what’s the point if 99% of these people bounce off your website?

Therefore, that is why your digital marketing agency should monitor your businesses bounce rate, if its high then your seo agency should work to reduce your companies bounce rate.

So, most leading digital marketing agencies will now agree that is a good idea to reduce a businesses bounce rate, and therefore aim to keep visitors on the website for longer?

And what is a good way of doing this?

Well, we glad you asked, here’s some of the way’s our seo agency achieves this:

·        Create high-quality content marketing

·        Make sure your website is easy to use

·        Use internal backlinks to direct the reader to another page on the website that they may also wish to read

·        Make the shopping cart easy to use

Add blog posts

Here’s the thing, your business could create really good content marketing, so good your business obtains better rankings and more backlinks.

Yet, if the content marketing is done wrong, let’s say its not white hat, well your business could incur a penalty.

So, we would recommend adding blog posts, but make sure they are white hat. If you do not know what white hat means, then we would recommend talking to a white hat seo company.

NAP

Here’s a really quick way you can improve your website, and that’s by adding NAP details to your website.

NAP stands for name, address and phone number for your business. Now you might be thinking, hang on a minute, every business is surely going to have this information on their company’s website?

Well sometimes the answer is no, no they don’t. Sometimes a business will have its phone number, but then no address, instead they may use a marker on a map, and because the road is so well known the business believes it’s easy to find.

But this is no good, in order to improve your businesses local SEO your business will need to add the complete NAP details to your website.

And if your business does have your NAP details on your website, well why not mark-up the NAP details using Schema?

Okay, how much does your SEO company charge for SEO?

We offer affordable prices, yet we would need to understand how competitive your business sector is.

For example, normally its much easier to implement seo for a gardening business, than it would for say a divorce solicitor that runs a family law practice. And you may now be thinking, well why is that so?

Well its because often in the more competitive business sectors, say for example dental practices that are in a large city, the level of competition will be high.

This means that most probably a large number of dentists will already be investing in SEO, which means the standard of seo may well be very high.

This means that some dental practices may have many good quality backlinks, and have been implementing SEO for a very long time.

This is why when a new dental practice starts to invest in SEO, there will be a lot of work to do, so this means the cost of seo will be more.

If you would like a no obligation quote, then why not give us a call?

 

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4 ways you can improve your businesses local SEO (Bristol)

Introduction

Whether you’re a plumber or a high-flying solicitor in Bristol, well its safe to say that you will know the benefits on investing in local SEO.

Local SEO if implemented correctly can help your business to stand out from the crowd. Through optimising your website, it can start to get higher up the ranks on Google, which of course makes it much easier for people to find your business.

But that bit we all know, what’s much less obvious is how you improve your website’s SEO so that you can get better rankings.

We mean each week so many digital marketing agencies write articles offering advice. And when a business does sit down and take note of all these suggestions, well quickly your notepad will run out of room.

So, we thought it was about time that we wrote a straightforward guide, one that explained four simple steps that can help to improve your businesses local seo.

So here we go, here’s what our seo agency thinks are four good ways to improve your businesses local seo.

#1 Google My Business

We know when your starting a new business there is a million and one things that you need to do.

So, its fair to say that some businesses may not have dedicated all the time that is required to create a detailed Google My Business account.

However, having a Google My Business account, that your business has spent time and effort creating is important.

Therefore, our seo agency recommends that you spend time creating your Google My Business account. And here’s some of the information regarding your business that you should add:

·        Opening hours

·        Business description

·        Address

·        Phone number

·        Website

·        Pictures of your business, i.e the store front

 

#2 Business reviews

 

We know what its like, you can easily get caught up in the day to day running of your business, and have many happy customers, but not capitalise on all this good will.

So, if you have customers which express to you that they are very happy with the service that your business offered, well why not ask them to leave a business review?

Many digital marketing agencies, including ours, now believe that business reviews are important part of local seo.

Not only can they persuade people to use your business, if the reviews are good, but also some seo companies believe that reviews are used by the algorithm in order to evaluate how good your businesses seo is.

However, we always say to our clients never write fake business reviews. We know as a start-up business, or a business that simply wants to obtain reviews quickly, you might think writing a few fake business reviews will be okay.

However, the algorithms are now very sophisticated, they can therefore spot fake reviews, and the algorithms do spot fake reviews, then your business may not show up in the Google My Business results.

#3 Blog posts

No matter if you run a dental practice or you are a builder, we highly recommend adding high-quality blog posts to your website.

So what do we mean by “high-quality” we hear you ask, well we think that each blog post that your business publishes should be:

·        Unique, so not published anywhere else

·        Offer useful information

·        Be interesting

·        Must be relevant to your business

So for example, lets say you run a dental practice, well its likely that a lot of people are going to be interested in your businesses teeth whitening services.

So, you could publish blog posts offering information on how the teeth whitening process works.

Therefore your likely to have frequently asked questions, regarding how the teeth whitening process works. You could therefore answer these questions.

You should always aim to make your work better than that of your competitors, so for example perhaps you can aim to make your work more interesting, by having videos made by your dentists which explain how the teeth whitening process works. You should then supplement this with written text, that’s so the algorithms know what that page is about.

Also why not work with an SEO agency who can implement onsite seo for your business. You can then state on social media that your business has written a blog post offering advice on teeth whitening.

This way more people will be able to read your blog post, which increases the chance of your business obtaining backlinks.

#4 Backlinks

Most digital marketing agencies believe that for businesses to get onto the first page of Google, often the business will need high-quality backlinks.

The backlinks that your business needs are high-quality backlinks, that come from a relevant source.

If you are unsure as to what a high quality backlink is, we would recommend working with a white hat seo agency.

Can we help?

If your business requires further help with its SEO, then why not give us a ring?



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Which SEO tools should my business be using?

Introduction

Quite often businesses will simply outsource their seo requirements to a local SEO agency.

And we may well be deemed biased for saying this, but that does make a lot of sense. As your competitors may well be implementing really sophisticated seo techniques, therefore raising the benchmark that your business has to attempt to surpass.

Yet with that said, there will always be businesses that implement seo themselves. And therefore, may well be struggling to know which SEO statistics that they need to take heed of, and more importantly which seo tools to use.

So without further ado, let us recommend two seo tools that we use, and the information that you can glean from these seo tools.

Google Analytics

You’ve probably heard of Google Analytics long before now, if not its super easy to set-up, so if you haven’t done so, well what you waiting for?

Here’s what our marketing agency uses Google Analytics for:

Bounce rate

Sometimes some businesses become obsessed with where their business ranks. That’s to say you may well be checking where your business ranks while preparing your dinner, or on the way back home whilst you’re on the train, or even when you have your morning coffee!

Simply put where your business ranks is important, yet there are other statistics that your business will need to monitor as well. One such metric is your businesses bounce rate.

Now, the bounce rate is normally expressed as a percentage, and all this means is how many people landed on a page on your website, and then more or less left straightaway.

Now you may well be thinking why on earth would I want to know that? Surely if they’ve left, well they are not interested in what my business has to offer, so why care about those people?

Well, here’s the thing, you have to think of your website kind of like a restaurant, that’s to say you want people to come to your restaurant, you want people to spend time there, and you want people to spend their money.

So, if people are landing on your website, then leaving more or less straightaway, well this means you should sit down with your seo company and ask why this might be so?

As it means your getting people to your website, yet your business may well be missing something that is causing people to leave the website. So for example, are your product descriptions detailed enough?

Here’s another thing to think about, many digital marketing agencies, including ours think this, if your websites bounce rate is sky-high, well this could be an indication that your website does not correctly answer the question.

And guess what? Well Google, and the other search engines may think that a high bounce rate means that your website isn’t answering the question neither, so this could mean your rankings go down.

Now imagine this scenario, your looking for a pizza, you look on two pizza websites, website A you don’t like the look of, as there’s not many pizza options to choose from, also there’s no information on how long deliveries take, so you leave that website.

Now website B is totally different, it tells you that it’s a family run business, gives you information on the ingredients that they use, has loads of good customer reviews, plus it has an FAQ which explains the average delivery time is under 20 minutes.

So, you spend 8 minutes ordering a pizza on website B, and you only spend 20 seconds deliberating whether to purchase a pizza from website A. Now imagine if thousands of people are looking to buy a pizza and do the same thing.

You start to see why website B is much more likely to rank higher than website A.

Organic visitor numbers

Our seo agency specialises in offering an organic seo service, and many businesses want to improve where their businesses ranks organically.

So, in order to monitor whether your companies seo efforts are resulting in an increased number of organic visitors, you can log into your Google Analytics account and see if the volume of organic visitors is increasing.

For example, how many organic visitors did your business receive last month? Now compare that with this month?

This can be a good way of seeing if your seo efforts are helping to draw more people to your business’s website.

Google Search Console

This is another really useful tool. We mainly use Google Search Console for the following information:

Backlinks

It’s really important that you monitor your businesses backlinks, one way you can do this is to use your Google Search Console account, and obtain a list of your businesses backlinks.

Google makes this very easy for you to do, and you can even put the backlinks into an Excel document.

Often you will need the help of a white hat seo agency, or an expert link builder, that understands white hat seo to tell you if the links are of good quality or not.

Queries

Also, you may wish to use Google Search Console to see which search queries your website is being returned for.

So, for example you may run a dental practice, and you may wish to promote your businesses teeth whitening service, so you could check in Google Search Console whether your website ranks for this keyword and where.

For example, for teeth whitening services your business may have ranked 33rd last month, now it may rank 8th this month, this shows that your seo is helping to improve your businesses website.

Can we help your business?

If your business needs help with any aspect of implementing your seo, then why not give us a call, or e-mail us today?



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How long will it take it get my business onto the first page of Google?

Introduction

It’s probably one of the most frequently asked questions that most seo company’s gets asked, that is how long does it take to get a business onto the first page of Google?

And that’s to be expected right? All SEO agencies should be able to reel off an answer almost immediately to this question, surely?

Well no. That’s the long and short of it. That’s because every business sector is different, and it all comes down to how strong your competitors are.

So, here’s why it’s not such a straightforward question to answer:

How strong are your competitors?

In a nutshell, it all boils down to this, how strong are your competitors?

Are they a bunch of pushovers? Or, are they established businesses that have recognised the importance of investing in digital marketing, so they’ve paid for expert advice, and have therefore been subsequently implementing high quality seo for many years?

Well, if you operate in a competitive business sector, and how many businesses do not these days? It’s therefore safe to say that you will often find that the competition have been investing in seo, and often for many years, so there’s often a lot of work by a business that needs to be completed to catch up.

So, if a new business thinks it can wade into the party late, and then take on the established status-quo for a few hundred quid a month, well often that business will be quickly disappointed with how far the business will get.

Therefore organic seo often requires a sustained investment, and often for a long time.

Your fibbing, we’ve rang a business and their going to do it all for a pittance

Often this is the type of e-mail that some seo companies receive after explaining what they can offer, and how much it will cost.

That’s to say the customer may get on the phone and is often able to find a much cheaper quote in a matter of minutes. So, that’s good right, why would a business pay over the odds for seo services?

Well, quite simply put the old saying starts to spring to mind, that is, you truly do get what you pay for!

And when it comes to seo this saying cannot be more true. Here’s the thing, there are so many marketing agencies that offer seo services at really cheap prices.

Yet, these companies may not be implementing the best quality seo (white hat). This means they may be able to get your website moving forwards, and even to rank on the first page for a bit, but sooner or later if the seo isn’t quality, well your business will incur a penalty.

A penalty, such as a Google Penguin penalty can mean your website drops, so from like page 1 to page 20, or it could mean your business is removed altogether.

And don’t think in all cases a business can then bounce back overnight, as sometimes it can mean that a businesses will suffer from being ranked much lower for some time. This is not to mention the hefty bill your new seo agency may charge you if you ask them to fix the previous seo agencies mistakes.  

One more thing, do not let the price point of the seo services fool you, as really cheap seo may mean you the quality of the seo is rubbish, but paying a lot of money to an agency also doesn’t guarantee that your business is immune to low quality seo.

So, it all boils down to one thing, is the seo quality or not? If its not your business may incur a penalty, like a Google Panda penalty.

I am hearing problems, I want to hear some solutions!

The solution is simple, partner with a white hat seo agency. It’s as simple as that, yet some businesses state they are white hat, when they are not, so you have to find a business truly offers quality seo work.

So, what factors are pivotal when an seo agency is deciding on how much work is needed?

We believe how long it will take for a business to get onto the first page depends on these three factors:

#1 How strong your competitors are

Now, some seo agencies may state that it will take a very long time to get your business onto the first page. Yet, sometimes this will be an honest assessment in terms of how much work is required.

As previously mentioned, it does all boil down to how strong your competitors are. So your digital marketing agency should evaluate your competitors:

·        Backlinks

·        What’s their content marketing like?

·        How well their website has been been built

·        Onsite seo efforts

Then your seo business can gain an understanding of how much work is required in order to beat your direct competitors.

#2 Quality of the SEO

Quality seo takes a lot of time to implement correctly. For example, to build quality backlinks takes a lot of time.

Quality must come first.

#3 Monitor results

Your seo business should be monitoring results, they should then report back to you weekly or monthly on how well your seo is progressing.

So we think its no a matter of plucking numbers out of thin air

Often many marketing agencies secure new clients by telling them what they want to hear. That’s to say where some companies do not offer a timeframe for how long it will take to get their business onto page one, some do.

However the businesses that do, well sometimes they are plucking a number out of thin air. Hoping that the business selects their seo agency, and signs a 12 month contract for seo services.

We think that a much better approach would be find an agency that offers quality work, and then presents their findings for how strong your direct competitors are.

Then based on how much work is required, a monthly fee is set.

Then, each month the business is sent an seo report, they can then see how far the business is progressing.

The seo agency should also provide a breakdown of work items they have been working on. Then the business can see what’s been implemented, and if the website is not moving forwards as soon as they would like, they can invest more.

As long as the agencies implementing white hat work, and keeping their client informed of progress we think this is the best way to work with an agency. That’s rather than choosing a company that over promises, yet under delivers.

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What are backlinks and how to you go about building them?

Introduction

A lot of businesses will do a bit of research prior to investing in SEO, that’s so they can understand a bit about the process.

And while doing this research into SEO, there will undoubtably be one term that keeps cropping up time and time again, that term is “backlinks”.

Yet, with so much conversation among various seo agencies about backlinks it can be confusing as to know which backlinks your business needs.

That’s to say does your business need no-follow or do-follow backlinks? Does your business require quality backlinks from just a few websites, or do you operate in a very competitive business sector and potentially require thousands of good quality backlinks?

So many questions, so little time!

Without further ado, why not let us answer some of the most commonly asked questions we get asked about backlinks.

Tell us, why exactly are backlinks so important?

Most businesses want to be ranked on the first page of Google. After all, if your business is on the first page of Google then for some businesses this can increase the volume of sales that the business makes.

That’s the obvious bit, what’s less obvious is how a business gets onto the first page of Google.

Well, it all comes down to the strength of your businesses ranking signals. There are thought to be over 200 ranking signals for each website.

And that’s right you guessed it, if your website has the strongest it will rank on the first page of Google.

But, there’s a further layer of complexity, that’s because Google’s algorithm and also most search engines do not treat all ranking signals the same.

That’s to say some are much more important than some others. Backlinks however are widely regarded as one of the most important ranking signals, that’s to say some seo companies believe that backlinks are in the top three, in terms of how important that ranking signal is.

 

So, why does quality matter so much?

So many businesses and also so many marketing agencies still build backlinks incorrectly.

Sometimes this is just due to the fact they do not know how to build backlinks, but sometimes its due to the fact they are just trying to cut corners.

Either way it boils down to this, if your business has spammy links, or low-quality links then its likely your website will be hit with a link penalty.

A link penalty can mean your website drops in terms of where it ranks. If the backlinks are really rubbish, in terms of quality then your business may well be removed altogether.

 

So, what exactly are internal backlinks?

Backlinks can either be internal or external, internal backlinks simply take somebody to another page on your website.

So let’s say for example you run an accountancy practice, and your writing about a new change to corporation tax, well at the end of the blog post you may wish to offer the reader to visit your page which offers more information on corporation tax.

So in a nutshell it’s a brilliant way of keeping visitors on your website for longer. As what might have happened instead is the reader may have found out what they needed to know about the corporation tax change, and then not read about the accountancy services that your business offers.

What exactly are external backlinks?

This is the important bit, and that’s because white hat seo companies, like ours use external backlinks in order to help improve where a business ranks.

So, for example, it doesn’t matter if you run a dental practice or a solicitors practice, often what’s needed to get your business onto the first page of Google is external backlinks.

This means that more often than not the businesses that rank on first page of Google, are ranked there because they have strong backlinks.

Therefore your digital marketing agency should be building quality backlinks for your business.

Can you tell us what are no-follow and do-follow backlinks?

In order to improve where a website ranks you need do-follow backlinks, the reason for this is do-follow backlink send what is called “link juice”.

This means that marketing agencies will be trying to build quality backlinks for their clients, which are do follow.

However, its worth knowing this, and that is most seo companies, including ours believe its important to have no-follow backlinks. These backlinks may not pass “link juice” yet if your backlink profile is completely made up do-follow backlinks then this can look artificial, and therefore not white hat.

 

 

What does “anchor text” mean?

The anchor text is simply the text that you click on in order to follow a link. So let’s say you are reading this SEO article, and you see a term your not too familiar with, such as “white hat”, well the business may offer a link to a page that explains what white hat means.

This is helpful to the reader, yet it is also beneficial to the businesses seo, the reason being is internal links help to reduce a websites bounce rate, and also help to keep the reader on your businesses website for longer.

So, tell us how exactly should my business be building backlinks?

First things first, we cannot stress the point enough that your business should only be building backlinks in a white hat way.

Therefore we think that the best way to build backlinks is to earn backlinks. What we mean by this is if you make your company website really useful, then its likely that other websites are going to what to link to your website.

So lets say for example you run a dental practice, if you offer really good information on how to look after your teeth, then other websites may wish to link to your website.

For example, a website which offers medical advice on how to prevent tooth pain, such a website may link to your work because they believe the article is well written, and will be useful to their readers.

If your business requires help with its seo, then why not give us a ring today?

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7 ways to improve your businesses onsite SEO

Introduction

It’s fair to say that SEO can be super complicated sometimes, after all building high quality backlinks is not easy to do.

Yet, with that said, there’s also some areas of SEO that are much easier to implement.

This means that as long your business is implementing white hat methods, well implementing these easy methods could help to improve your seo.

So this had us thinking, what do we think are seven easiest ways you can improve your websites onsite seo? And here they are:

 

#1 Separate pages

Sometimes some website designers want to build a website quickly, so this can sometimes mean that each group of products, or the group of services that your business offers are all listed on one page.

So for example, perhaps you run a plumbing business, and you offer emergency call outs, boiler repair and bathroom installations.

This is all well and good, yet if all these services are grouped together and advertised on one page on your website, well it becomes much harder to implement seo.

So instead you may wish to talk to your seo agency and have each main service placed on its own page.

This will allow each separate page to have its own service or product description, meta titles and meta description, unique url, alt tags.

 

#2 Adequate product or service descriptions

Again this leads us back to our previous point, and that is sometimes a website will come back from a website designer with its main pages that only have a few lines of text.

This means that when Googlebot crawls the page, it may have a hard time figuring out what the business is offering.

This is as opposed to a page which has a quite a wordy description, perhaps even answers some frequently asked questions that a customer may have for example.

So, for example, let’s say the business in question is a dental practice, and lets say the business offers teeth whitening.

Well this would present an opportunity to explain how the dental practice offers teeth whitening, who the staff at the practice are, and also answer some commonly asked questions also.

This would be a much better marketing strategy, that’s opposed to just having a few lines of text that explain the dental practices teeth whitening service.

 

#3 Meta titles and meta descriptions

Meta titles and meta descriptions are very easily to add to most websites. If you have a WordPress website, well they are super easy to add to any blog post or main page.

And they are an important part SEO.

If you don’t know what meta titles and meta descriptions are, well they are just the few lines of text that describe what that page offers.

So let’s say your looking for a new mountain bike, you search for businesses that sell “mountain bikes” and you will then be presented with loads of businesses. Some will be PPC adds and some will be organic business listings.

Now even though your business may well be on the first page of Google, your business still needs to standout.

To do this you should write a really good meta title and meta description, which will interest someone looking for what your business offers.

Also, you may wish to work with your digital marketing agency to implement what is called Schema.

This sounds complicated, but Schema is a form of structured language, and this means that if implemented correctly, then your business listing can feature more information, such as its star rating in terms of what customers think of your business.

Many SEO companies believe that by implementing Schema you can improve your businesses CTR.

CTR stands for click through rate, which simply means if your business has a organic business listing that stands out because of Schema, this can improve your companies’ CTR.

 

#4 Internal links

Let’s say you are writing a blog post, and you mention a few terms that people may not know the meaning of, well this is a great opportunity to use an internal backlink.

So let’s say you run a successful family law practice, and your writing blog posts about divorce, and you mention the word “mediation”- well, a lot of people will know not know how mediation can help them through the divorce process, so this is a good place to use an internal link that allows people to click the link, and read more about mediation on your website.

 

#5 Blog

Blogging or adding articles to your website is an important part of the SEO process. Yet, what sometimes happens is a business just won’t know what to talk about, or they blog only when they have the time.

What you often see is a business will have a really good seo strategy, so they are adding work on a regular basis, then they get onto the first page of Google, and just stop adding blog posts.

This often means that the website will soon drop in terms of where it ranks, as with organic seo often continuous effort is required.

So, this is often why so many businesses partner with seo companies like ours, this is so blog posts can be added on a regular basis.

 

#6 Loads correctly on smartphones

Some websites may well be mobile friendly, yet this doesn’t always mean they are easy to use. So work with your seo company to see if you can make your website easy to use on smartphones.

 

#7 FAQ

This is something that so many businesses just do not think about! It’s simple to implement, and it may just mean you generate more sales.

That is most businesses should have an FAQ. An FAQ allows you to answer commonly asked questions that your customers have, well having to improve how long a person spends on your businesses website.

Also if you have an FAQ and this does answer the persons questions, then this may have to reduce the websites bounce rate. The reason the bounce rate may well be reduced is the person may find an answer to their question, so they haven’t got to go to a competitors website to find the answer.

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What were the Google Penguin updates all about?

Introduction

From a business owner perspective, it can get mighty confusing when trying to keep up with all the changes that are made to how SEO should be implemented. This means that a lot of business owners can walk away from a meeting with their respective marketing agencies and feel rather bamboozled by all marketing jargon!

That’s to say all that talk about Hummingbirds, Pandas and Penguins, well anybody might think they are visiting a zoo not an SEO agency!

Yet these names all have real significance to how SEO should be implemented. That’s to say if any business was to ignore what any of these updates mean, well they are probably not implementing seo correctly.

And because every update to Google’s algorithm warrants its very own blog post, we are going to concentrate on the Google Penguin update here in isolation.

So, what exactly is the Google Penguin update?

In a nutshell how you implement SEO falls into one of two boxes, that’s the box labelled “white hat seo” and the other box is labelled “cutting corners”.

Now, we only ever recommend implementing white hat seo, which means to do the job properly.

Yet, with that said there are so many digital marketing agencies that simply decide to cut corners, that’s to say they try and fool Google’s algorithm.

However, trying to fool Google’s algorithm only results in one thing, and that’s a penalty being applied to the website.

Now an old tactic that some businesses used to use, and some agencies still do use is to try and improve where the business is ranked, is to build as many backlinks as they can to a page or the homepage of a website.

This means some businesses-built links regardless of whether they came from a quality source or not- this later proved to be a totally flawed seo strategy.

The reason being is these links would most likely be deemed as rubbish by the algorithm, so the website would most likely incur a Google Penguin penalty.

So what backlinks does your website need instead? Well, that’s a really good question! The backlinks your website really requires are quality backlinks, that are relevant to your business.

So, let’s say you run a solicitors practice, and you specialise in the area of employment law. The best backlinks for your law practice would be from a respected website that publishes employment law news.

This will be the sort of website that most employment solicitors will have heard of, and the news is deemed as reliable. This is the sort of website that your law practice should obtain a backlink from.

So, when an SEO agency states they will build thousands of links for a pittance, this wont be the type of backlinks that my business needs?

Building backlinks takes a huge amount of time. The reason being is the only backlinks your website requires are quality backlinks, as mentioned earlier.

So, if you approach an online marketing agency for a quote, and they say they can offer thousands of backlinks for very little money, well this is normally a sign that they might be building the backlinks incorrectly.

Instead you need to find an seo company that uses white hat methods, that’s to say they will normally build fewer backlinks, but the backlinks should be quality. You must partner with a respected seo agency, as if your marketing agency doesn’t build the links correctly then this could result in a link penalty.  

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

So, if a business did build the backlinks incorrectly, what would happen next?

A lot of businesses were affected by the Google Penguin updates when they were first rolled out, and it basically meant that if your website had spam links, or low-quality backlinks then your website may see its rankings drop.

So for example, say you run a dental practice, and you ranked number one for “dentists that offer teeth straightening” –  yet after the Penguin update, because your backlinks were low quality, you may drop to say page 11 of Google.

Sometimes if the backlinks were really low-quality, then your website may be removed altogether.

What does it mean to disavow backlinks?

If your website was affected by the Google Penguin updates, or has been hit by a penalty lately, then you really should consult with a respected white hat seo agency.

They will be able to tell you whether your backlinks should be disavowed, which means a request is sent to Google to ask them to ignore some of your business’s backlinks.

However, this should only be done by an expert, as disavowing the wrong links, well this could cause more of a problem.

Why should my SEO business be checking our backlinks on a regular basis?

If your website accumulates spam links, or your building low quality backlinks, this can result in a penalty being incurred.

With this in mind, your SEO agency should be checking your businesses backlinks. That’s to say if spam links, or low-quality backlinks are spotted, well your seo company should be doing something about this.

Does your business require help with its seo, then why not give us a ring?

 

 



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What are backlinks and how can they help to improve my SEO?

Introduction

If you’ve ever attended a meeting with your SEO agency, or just cast your eyes over the monthly SEO report, well you will know that the term “backlinks” often crops up time and time again.

Yet, many business owners will be asking themselves what exactly are backlinks? And also, why are backlinks so important?

What are backlinks?

So, in a nutshell backlinks make it super easy for you to jump across to a different website.

For example, you may be reading about a holiday destination that you wish to visit on a travel blog, and you click a tab that takes you the another website that allows you to book a holiday.

So, for example, to land on the other website you may have clicked a bit of text (anchor text), that may have simply read “Book a holiday to Greece”.

Therefore, you will have followed a link, you will have clicked a link that will takes you to a website that allows you book a holiday in Greece. And you will have followed the link by clicking on the anchor text that was written on a travel blog.

So, backlinks are useful to people as they allow them to quickly jump to another website that will help them.

Yet, backlinks also have a different purpose when it comes to SEO, and that is the links that lead to your website can be assessed by Google’s algorithm.

The algorithm can therefore work out how important your website is, for example if you have hundreds or thousands of good quality links, which are coming from good quality websites, then Google’s algorithm will know your website is important.

It’s kind of like a vote of confidence in your business

Let’s think for a second like Google’s algorithm would, and let’s say you are looking to purchase a new swanky kitchen for your home.

Now which website do you think would rank the best? Website one, which has no backlinks at all and is a start-up business.

Or, website two, now website two has hundreds of backlinks, these originate from interior design websites and also from blogs which talk about home improvements?

Well of course its most likely to be website two that’s going to rank higher. Yet, with that said you have to also remember this, and that is Google’s algorithm is thought to take account over 200 pieces of information when working out how important your website is.

These pieces of information us seo consultants refer to as “ranking signals”. So do keep in mind that backlinks are important, yet it’s also worth knowing that there are many other signals that your seo agency should be optimising as well.

So, backlinks are one ranking signal, yet there are meta titles, alt tags and over 200 other ranking signals that Google’s algorithm also takes into account when working out how important your website is.

Yet, back to backlinks, if your business has loads of good quality backlinks, well this is like a vote of confidence in your business.

In a nutshell, if loads of quality websites link to your business, well this can often help to improve where your business ranks.

Also, most digital marketing agencies believe that out of all the ranking signals, backlinks are one of the most important, if not the most important.

Yet, for the backlinks to help your businesses seo they must be quality backlinks.

Quality backlinks

So, what are good quality backlinks? Well that’s a really good question, as loads of businesses simply get their link building strategies totally wrong.

And when we say wrong, well, we mean that this can result in a link penalty, which can mean that the business drops where it ranks, or no longer shows up in a search engine like Google.

So, quality is important, and here’s what we mean by quality:

 

Must originate from a quality source

So, let’s say you are an online retailer of wedding rings, and you want your business to rank at the very top for the term “diamond wedding rings”.

Now, if you want to correctly optimise your website, the backlinks that lead to your website must be from a respected source that’s also relevant to your business.

So, for example, a website that offers advice when planning for a wedding, and that’s widely regarded as a leading publication, this is the sort of website that you want linking to your wedding ring website. As this adheres to white hat seo.

What you don’t want to do is appoint a digital marketing agency, and they say you need more backlinks, so they are going to buy backlinks regardless of quality. As what will happen is soon enough is the website will incur a link penalty.

A link penalty, such as the Google Penguin, can place a penalty on your website if you have poor quality backlinks. This can result in your businesses rankings dropping.

So, in a nutshell, its really important that you only have good quality and relevant backlinks leading to your website. If you’re in any doubt about this, call a respected white hat marketing agency for help.

Anchor text

The section of text that you click on to follow a link, well that’s called the “anchor text”. Now, if you don’t work in seo, well you would be forgiven for thinking that this small line of anchor text, or sometimes just a few words of anchor text isn’t really that important- but it is.

The reason being is countless businesses have incurred a link penalty simply because they over optimised their anchor text.

So, for example, let’s say you run a solicitor’s practice, and you specialise in Family Law. Now, if you operate in this area of law your going to want to attract business from clients that are currently  going through or thinking of going through a divorce.

Now a really rubbish seo agency may therefore build each link with the anchor text “divorce solicitors + the city in which you are based”.

The wording of the anchor text is not natural, and because of this Google’s algorithm will pick up on this, and your business may incur a link penalty.  

So, how should our business be building backlinks?

So, you’ve heard about Google Penguin update, so now you know why its super important that you build backlinks correctly.

Our seo company always recommends that you build backlinks organically. What we mean by organically is to make your website the best source of information that you can, that’s so other businesses will want to link to your website.

For instance, say you are a retailer of bathroom suites, we would always recommend writing guides and articles that are likely to interest people who want to buy your products.

So, for instance, you may retail claw-legged baths, why not provide interior design recommendations on how to design a Victorian bathroom?

This way interior design websites may link to your article, therefore you have built backlinks organically.

Alternatively, you may retail shower trays and shower enclosures, so why not offer free DIY advice on how to install these items? This way DIY websites may link to your website?

 

Audit

Whichever SEO business you choose one thing is for sure, that is the marketing agency should be checking your websites backlinks on a regular basis.

A good quality agency should therefore be reporting back to you the health of your websites backlinks.

If there are any problems, you should be advised about this.

How we can help

If your business requires more help to build backlinks, or your business requires more white hat seo advice, then why not give us a ring?

 

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A few things you should know about the Google Panda update

Introduction

If your business invests in SEO, well your bound to have heard of the Google Panda update.

So, whether the term has cropped up in an SEO meeting, or perhaps you’ve seen the term mentioned in an seo blog post, you’re probably thinking what does the term mean.

The Google Panda update was an important algorithm update that helped to weed out low quality websites.

This blog post describes the types of websites that were affected, and why quality matters when it comes to SEO.

 

Which websites did the Panda update particularly target?

It’s fair to say that online marketing agencies can fall into one of two categories, that’s the ones that want to implement quality work, and the agencies that want to cut corners.

Now some businesses may think what’s wrong with cutting a few corners, that’s if the business get’s onto the first page of Google?

Well, the answer is simple, if corners are cut then often Google’s algorithm will detect this, and Google can then issue a penalty.

Sometimes a manual or algorithmic penalty is implemented. However sometimes the website may just see some pages, or sometimes the whole website drop in terms of where it ranks.

And this can be because Google’s algorithm has detected low quality seo. Here are some examples of the sort of rubbish seo that Google’s Panda update does not like.

Content thin websites

Ever been searching to find a product or service, then once you’ve found a business you’ve been rather unimpressed by the company’s website.

For example, the website may not have enough information to allow you to purchase the product.

You may want to purchase a new desk for example, yet the website does not supply you with the dimensions of the desk.

Plus, you would like to know what wood the desk is made from, yet the website just offers very basic information or none at all.

This sort of page on a website could be deemed “content thin”- as in does not have enough information.

Spammy

Some businesses opt for the cheapest seo quote they can find, however quite often if the seo work is really cheap, well this is often when the work could be spammy.

An example of a spammy website would be for example, say a garden maintenance business, that lists many areas that they complete work.

What often makes this spammy is that each page will have the same list of areas, and an attempt will be made to get the website to rank high for each main service, such as garden fencing for example.

Duplicated content

A lot of websites that copied content from another website would have been impacted by the Panda update.

For example, say a business was retailing a dishwasher, the business may copy and paste the product description directly from the manufacturer. And you may be thinking, why not? As this would surely save a lot of time?

Well, no and here’s why, Google likes a website to have original content. This means if a website duplicates its work from another source, this could mean that the website incurs a penalty.

So how should our business be creating content marketing?

The content marketing that you create for your business we believe should satisfy the following criteria:

Relevant

The work should be relevant to your business, i.e what questions do your customers frequently ask?

You should then aim to answer these questions as best you can.

Quality

The content marketing that your business produces must be of a high quality. What we mean by high quality is the work should be useful.

For example, you may sell used luxury cars, so to stand out from the crowd you should create content marketing that aims to be better than your competitors. For example, you may publish an article such as “Our top 10 500+ bhp cars for under 50k”

Then the article should have sufficient detail, so the author should justify why they have selected those model cars, and why they offer such value at under 50k.

This will make for an interesting read for car enthusiasts that are interested in sports cars. This then should bring visitors to your website, and the article may gain likes and shares on social media.

This could mean that other websites link to the work, so backlinks may well be created.

Therefore, the work should be quality focused, that’s by being useful to your readers.

Not spammy

Our best advice is this, do not create content marketing just for pure SEO gain, it simply will not work.

You have to put your target customer first. That’s to say which type of work will most interest them?

Google’s set of questions

If you want to learn more about Google’s Panda update, then we would recommend this article.

Quality

We would also recommend reading this article:

How we can help:

If your business requires help with its SEO, then why not call us?

 

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What does NAP even mean?

Introduction

When a business starts to invest in local seo, well it can be a confusing time for some business owners.

The reason that is so, is because some seo agencies just use too much blooming marketing jargon.

So, you may well be just getting acquainted with your new marketing business, when they state a sentence something like this:

“Its important that your NAP information is correctly implemented, otherwise conflicting citations may cause confusion the algorithm as to where your business is, jeopardising your chances of visibility in the local map listings”.

Now, this is a mighty confusing sentence, yet one so many marketing types blurt out all too easily.

We are different, we don’t like our clients being confused, this is why we explain everything clearly.

So, without further ado, let’s demonstrate our ability to make the confusing, simple!

What does NAP even mean?

NAP simply stands for name of your business, its address and phone number, and that is it.

The search engines, like Google use this information to gain greater confidence in where your business is based, and its contact details.

So, SEO agencies for donkey’s years have been adding NAP information to a website, then creating a well optimised Google My Business account, and supplementing this with business citation to improve where a business ranks.

Why it’s important that the NAP information is correct on your website

So many businesses get the basics wrong, here are some common mistakes that we often we at our marketing agency.

By the way, this is not the way to implement NAP:

NAP details are written into an image

Googlebot will have a very hard time reading NAP information that’s contained in an image. So instead your businesses NAP information should be written in plain text, and ideally marked-up with a structured language, like Schema.

The Schema part we appreciate sounds a bit complicated, so you might want to ask an seo agency for help.

The NAP details are inconsistent

Sometimes the NAP information doesn’t even match on the same website, so for example, the contact page NAP information may not match with the NAP information written into the footer.

The NAP information should be consistent, that’s both on the website, and offsite. By consistent we mean that the information should match exactly with one and other.

Google My Business

After you’ve got the NAP information on your website, its then time to optimise your businesses Google My Business account.

Here’s our agencies top advice when optimising a Google My Business account:

·        Make sure the NAP information matches your website

·        Write a detailed business description

·        Make sure that your business keeps your Google My Business account up to date, so if you change your businesses phone number, this should be updated on your Google My Business account.

Why using a local phone number is important!

Sometimes a business can’t avoid using a mobile phone number, for instance, a locksmith would often need to use a mobile number, rather than a landline.

But if you can use a local landline number do just that. Most digital marketing agencies think that it can be beneficial for a business implementing local seo to use a local phone number, rather than a mobile number.

Schema

Your business should use Schema to mark-up its Nap information.

How our digital marketing agency can help:

If your business requires help with its local seo, then why not give us a call? We offer affordable prices, and our work is always white hat.

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