Has it ever occurred to you that you may have keywords on your site that mislead search engines? Have you ever thought about the different meanings of the keywords you are trying to rank for?

Now that Google is delivering more personalisation in search results, there is much more to understanding search behaviour, intent-based search, and how that should affect keyword research. You need to be taking into consideration things like how prior queries influence future queries.  

If you sell telephones, you have to actively go out of your way to ensure you don’t have certain things appearing in your site otherwise the search engines could get confused about what you’re talking about.

One of the most important things is work out is how to do keyword research without knowing the behavioural aspects of people actually looking for your product. The focus needs to be on these personas - what kinds of things are they likely to search on, in sequence - before they type in telephone. If you understand that behaviour in sequence, then the better you can do your keyword research and determine how you’re going to put the words on your page.

Personalised search is nothing new as Google has been personalising search results for some time. It just now appears that Google is looking for more ways to deliver users a personalised experience.

Let me introduce you to someone in our office… Siân. When Siân shops, she knows what she shops for. She types into Google... red shoes, high heel, size 5. When your site pops up, she clicks onto your site, ready to buy. Then you go and make the stupendous mistake of landing her into a page about handbags. Confused and disappointed, Siân clicks straight off your site and into your competitors, making a mental note never to visit your company again.

High street retailers, Next, noticed that they had a high exit rate from search pages for boys socks and they found that by testing more specific results, they reduced exit rates by 20% and increased conversions by 7%. Therefore if you had landed Siân into your shoe section you would have at least been on the right track, but if you had landed Siân into a page featuring high-heel red shoes size 5, then you too could reduce your exit rate and increase your conversions too.

Top tips for site search:

1. Check quality of results: Is your site’s search function working well? Ensure visitors are getting relevant results, even when they search on synonyms or misspellings.
2. Make site search visible: Visitors to your site should be able to see, at a glance, where to search. Consider enlarging your search box or making it more prominent.
   
3. Allow customers to sort results: People like to be able to sort through search results. Allow visitors to order what they see by anything from price or popularity to colour, style etc.
4. Lay out search results clearly: Ensure visitors can glance through search results and compare listings easily to decide where to click next.

You may be wondering why keyword research is so important and why it has such an impact on your website’s success. Well, keyword research is an essential process that needs to be applied for you to promote your business properly online and to make sure the right customers find you.

There are a number of different Keyword Research Tools out there that you can use to find out your most competitive search terms and search terms that you are more likely to rank for. I recommend that you use the keyword tool called Google Adwords. It is simple to use and gives you a clear list of relevant keywords that are related to the search terms that you are looking for; it also shows you the advertiser competition for that keyword term and the search volume for the previous month and the average searches per month.  Google Adwords also allows you to download the keywords onto an Excel Spreadsheet which give you the option of managing the keywords and choosing the best keywords for you to use on your website. Therefore this is an extremely useful tool and can prove to be highly beneficial to your website.

The main objective of your website is to rank high in the major search engines; and the reason for this is to provide your business with much more online traffic which will, in turn, achieve a boost for your business. And to rank high on search engines, having the correct keywords that are most relevant to your business is of upmost importance.

There are many websites out there that have great products and content but eventually fail because of the incorrect or unpopular keywords that are used throughout the site; this means that their potential customers will struggle to find them because they would be ranking for the wrong keywords. This means that you need to do the correct research and make sure that your keywords are related to your website/business and make sure that your content is original and easy to read which will help you be found by your potential visitors on search engines.

So, in conclusion, and to answer the original question, keyword research is so important because it helps your business to succeed on the World Wide Web and helps your potential customers to find your website through the world renowned search engines.

Keyword Research is the key to success, follow these tips and you will have the online traffic your company needs for success!

What everyone asks first is, how many visitors did we get to our website? 

No matter how long you’ve had your website, your analytics tool, who you are or what you do! This is always the first question, your natural instinct.  So let’s look at a couple of variations: 

Visits 

Also be known as ‘total visitors’.  Simply put how many people visited your website in a given timeframe.   But, in this metric the same person could visit you website 5 times in a day and it would be counted five times.  This leads me onto... 

Unique Visits 

This is basically home many ‘unique’ people have visited your website in a given timeframe.  So, it doesn’t take into account repeat visit, well it does but it won’t include users who visit your website, say 5 times in a day. 

For example: I visit the BBC website 5 times in a day (to keep on top of the sport of course!). This would show as: 

• Visits:     5
• Unique Visits:    1 

I do this for a week: 

• Visits:    35
• Unique Visits:    1 

Why should you care and what you need to care about? 

They provide the foundation of the activity coming to your website.  I personally consider ‘unique visitors’ as more important of the two, as this in ‘new’ people coming to you shop, business.  How do they react, what actions do they take, how quickly do they leave, and a host other insights can be gained. However loyalty and ‘recency’ are also really important in building relationships and selling more – but we’ll be talking about this in the next week or two. 

So, pretty straightforward but you’d be amazed how people can get confused, so let’s all get on the ‘same page’ and I’ll define some more basics over the next week or so and then we can get down to some real conversion busting tips. 

Google Dave 

PS...Remember post your comments; let me know what you’d like to know.   

I have previously written an article about the top SEO hints and tips you should implement into your search engine strategy to rank high in search engines amongst your competitors. Now I am about to tell you the major “don’ts” of SEO so you can avoid those crucial mistakes so your website can carry on succeeding in the world of search engine optimization.

• Firstly, do not leave SEO from your website for too long. You should always be considering your SEO strategy from the beginning of your website development. SEO plays one of the most important parts in your website and needs to be thought about from the start.
• Do not waste your time submitting your website to countless search engines. Crawler-based search engines will find your website more quickly as soon as you get a link from another website that is already being crawled. Search engine submission is a thing of the past.
• Never make your website un-crawlable. You should always make sure that your website can be crawled by search engine spiders, because if it cannot be crawled then the search engines will not find you. An un-crawlable website can be due to having a convoluted navigation menu that spiders can’t follow, developing an all flash site, or even simply too many variables in your domain name.
• Make sure you don’t target keywords that are too ‘general’. If you want the best chance to rank high, then don’t target keywords that are crowded with competition. You need to do keyword research on your website and find out the best keywords, with a fair amount of competition, this will give you a chance of ranking for number one!
• Don’t ignore usability. You should always make your website user friendly and efficient for users and search engine spiders. This can be achieved with proper site structure, local navigation and sitemaps. So avoid over complicating your website and making it harder to use and navigate.
• You should never give up on creating good content for your website. As I have said before, content is key. The less content you have, then the less chance you have to fill your website with keywords which gives you less chance of being linked to by search engines. That is why the more content you have, the more search engines will link to you because your website would be more relevant because of more keywords. Simple.
• Never spam to help your website get found. This will NOT work. Search engines disapprove of websites that use spam to rank higher, so this will not work to improve your rank on search engines. So you should avoid posting your link on blog comments, guestbook’s ECT, stuffing META tags with keywords and also putting keywords into your footer with lightly coloured or hidden text.
• Patience is a virtue; don’t give up on SEO once started. SEO is a long, time-consuming process and demands time, attention and commitment. You need to be patient when doing SEO work on your website, because it may take months to see the results.

Well there you have it. I have just told you what NOT to do if you wish to succeed in the search engine world. If you read my previous blog then you will also know what you SHOULD do if you want to succeed. Thank you for reading; I hope I helped you understand the fundamentals of SEO success!

If you would like more information about SEO success, please read my other blog.

Top SEO Hints and Tips

The National Legal Trade Exhibition came to the BT Convention Centre last week, and Ph.Creative were of course one of the top local businesses to join the action.

This was a great opportunity to showcase our distinctive brand, the expertise of our ingenious creative team, and get out there and network with the people!

 

Always one for challenging the norm, and in true Ph-style, never being partial to a table-clothed trestle table, a few leaflets and branded biros, I donned my creative cap and got to thinking outside the box.  Over a coffee-fuelled brainstorm with the team, we pondered over a concept for our exhibition that would really make us stand out from the crowd.

 

As a surprisingly enthusiastic response was drawn from the childlike cartoon sketch of my exhibition stand vision…  

 

 

 

Ph.Creative Surgery was born...

Free IT Health Checks for those sick and tired of ineffective SEO and suffering aches and pains with online marketing strategies.

As the exhibition visitors filtered in, Ph.Creative Surgery was in full flow, consulting and advising on website effectiveness and prescribing remedies for the ailments of unsuccessful online marketing tools to the masses.

Bryan Adams presented yet another outstanding seminar on Online Marketing Tactics, which further prompted some technophobic patients to bob along for a check-up.  And if one mastermind lecture wasn’t enough, the medical team took a mid-afternoon respite to attend Sales Guru - Andy Bounds’ enlightening seminar, which was nothing short of inspirational team-building.

Diagnosis: Another great day at the office!

Having made a memorable impact (be that positive or negative!? You decide) Ph.Fever was certainly in the air!

If you missed out on your check-up this time, fear not... it won’t be long before the Doctor is back in town! (Or in case of an epidemic, give us a call!)

Facebook Ads, or Facebook Advertising to those who aren’t up-to-date with the lingo, is a new revolution which gives businesses, both small and large, the chance to communicate with millions of people worldwide.

Setting up a Facebook page is no longer the extent of what the social networking site can do for your business. Facebook Ads will allow you to target your specific demographics from over 300,000,000 members worldwide.

For example, if your business sells luxury handbags then you would be able to advertise specifically to all women, aged 25-40. Facebook Ads also uses keyword associations, so expect to be reaching all women who mention their love of fashion on their own Facebook pages. The wide range of data available is an amazing tool for the right advertiser.

It is also important to remember to feature an image in your advert as this is proven to attract more attention and ultimately, more clicks.

Unlike typical paid search advertising, you won’t be bidding for keywords; you’ll be bidding on the demographic of the user.

Whilst this level of demographic filtering is just at the start for Facebook, it can still allow you to accurately target your advertising. However, in typical Facebook style expect this to be developed pretty quickly so who knows where this could lead to.

So, why use Facebook Ads?

- You can target millions of your target market with the click of a button.
- You will increase your CTR (click through rate), attracting many more visitors to your site
- You should see an increase in the number of customers you are able to attract
- You’re going to be up against far less competition than you would be in the paid search area

Hopefully by now, the optimist in you should be jumping for joy but be warned you should approach Facebook Ads with realistic expectations. It may not work for you straight away but don’t be instantly deterred, give it some time and then try again. Creativity is key; you want to encourage Facebook users to engage with you and if you manage that, well, you’ll be basking in Facebook gold.

I am about to tell you some very useful and proven techniques to guarantee you and your website SEO success. These are the best ways to make sure your website is found among the other competing websites in search engines, such as Google or Bing.

• Before you do anything, you need to find out who your target audience is for you business/website. When you find out who they are, you need to optimize your site for your target audience so it is more likely to be found. To do this, you need to find out the most relevant keywords for your target audience and input them into your website.
• Google Adwords is an extremely good tool to find the best keywords for your business/website. This is so when you want to put keywords into your website, you know the best ones to go for that many people search for.
• When selecting the domain name for your website, try to include the keywords that you are trying compete for. This is an excellent way to rank high in a search engine for the keywords that you select. However try not to use too many hyphens in your domain because this may not look professional. A good example would be (www.keyword-keyword.co.uk)
• Content is key! A very useful technique would be to create as much content for each page as you possibly can with keywords written in it. This will help search engines find your website easier if they type in a phrase or keyword that happens to be written in you content, and more content gives you more of a chance of being found!
• The title for each page that is created in your site should be optimized with the keywords that you have selected for your website. This is a very useful method because the keywords in your title tag are partly how they rank websites in their ranking system.
• Headings play an important role in organizing information on a webpage. So when you are creating the page template, try to include at least H1-H3 for your headings. Headings make it easier for search engines to locate information which increases your potential to be higher up in the search engine.
• Another good tip for SEO success is to re-name all images and media with the keywords that you have chosen for your particular website. Such as (keyword-keyword-01.jpg). This helps because a search engine like Google will see your webpage more relevant than others because it will have more keywords in more places.
• And finally, another way to climb the search engines ranks is to link build! Link building can be done in a number of ways, from article submissions to website directories. These methods are extremely useful and there are a number of other link building techniques that will help you with achieving SEO success!

Thank you for reading my blog about how to make your website successful by using Search Engine Optimization. Now you are ready to take on the World Wide Web!

In recent months the Search Engines business has become a little more difficult for Google with the release of Microsoft Bing, the Microsoft / Yahoo deal and newer players to the market such as the revamped Ask Jeeves and Wolfram Alfa. Google also faced competition from Facebook with their acquisition of the much heralded Friend Feed, praised for its ‘real time search’ engine.

In many ways although Google have been dominant in market share, when it comes to innovation they have consistently been a poor performer, especially over the last few months. Back in May Google Founder Larry Page even admitted that they had fallen behind the likes of Twitter that boasts 45 million users worldwide.

However today Google lifted the lid on its answer to all of the above, Google Caffeine, as it has been knick named. The change lies under the hood of Google and as such we will not see any change to the way that Google looks. Although still in testing phase, it is the beginning of a major change to the architecture of Google providing the “first step in improving the speed, accuracy and comprehensiveness of search results".

The Golden Goose of the Search engines has always been relevance. This is the reason why real time search is such a popular concept. Its lets you know what is happening right now on any given subject. That is what Google promise to offer with Google Caffeine.

While only in testing at the moment this new development promises to put Microsoft’s Bing in the shade. The trouble with Bing is that is it an alternative to something that users are happy with. Can Google deliver on its promise of something new?

Why not try for yourself and let us know www2.sandbox.google.com