Take a look at our newly updated portfolio pages, featuring a selection of Green Media work completed during May. The update includes the new website for elite specialised security firm Bulwark Group, email marketing for Ferrari and a search optimised redesign for the HLA Services website.
We’ve launched the new Beamish Hall Country House Hotel website this week, see for yourself at www.beamish-hall.co.uk
We’re also search optimising the site for a range of hotel, wedding, conference and dining keyterms, so come back soon to see the progress.
We started search optimising asbestos surveying and management specialists Lucion Environmental’s website during February, targeting a specific set of industry keyterms. We’re happy to report that we’ve already achieved 1st page results on Google searches that the Lucion site was previously unranked on, providing a greater presence where it matters.
Best of all as it’s a full twelve-month SEO programme, we’re just getting started…
Take a look at some of the results so far;
“asbestos newcastle” - 2nd
“asbestos crawley” - 9th
Contrary to popular belief, pay per click (PPC) isn’t about throwing money at your account until it gets to the top of your searches. This way you’ll end up spending way over budget for a lot of very general traffic, and your conversion/ROI rate just won’t stack up.
PPC also tends to be something that a lot of SEO “experts” and amateurs think is easy to jump into and get immediate impacts without any real knowledge of the systems or strategies that should be used, which more often than not results in poor performance.
However, PPC can be a really effective platform when it’s used to its potential. Here are some quick ideas to get your PPC moving in the right direction.
1. Use organic SEO priniciples
Think about how you create your keyword list - terms that are difficult to achieve on organic searches translate to being competitive and expensive to achieve on PPC. The answer? Go long tail and be specific - you’ll find that CPCs are lower and the quality of visitor is higher.
2. Cut poor performers out
If your campaign contains a straggler keyterm that’s generating nothing and getting a far lower success (clicks/impressions/positioning/conversions) rate than the others then get rid of it. Your Quality Score is based on the whole campaign and poor performers can drag the entire thing down.
3. Be creative with your ad copy
An obvious but often overlooked PPC issue. How to do it? Look at the competitor ads on any given keyterm, you’re sure to find at least a few that are basically saying exactly the same thing - avoid doing this at all costs. You need to make your ad sufficiently different to stand out, and get as many USPs in as possible to encourage a click. It’s amazing how much detail can be squeezed into those 70 characters.
4. Write lots of ad variations and use them all
The main PPC systems allow multiple ads to be assigned to campaigns, and they carry out their own “survival of the fittest” process to determine the most effective. The result? The best ads are shown the most. This is a great help to marketers, and there’s no excuse not to use it. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, get a load of ads written up and let them sink or swim on their own. Once you know which ad style works the best, refine and improve it even more.
5. Diversify with ad groups
Don’t lump all your keywords in together. If the scope of your campaign is broad enough, use ad groups to split it up. This will let you create more specific ads for each topic, and move away from being too general.
6. Make your display URL jump out
While the display URL is a fairly rigid element, why not try introducing capital letters to make individual words stand out more? Look at this example, it’s clear which one is more attention-grabbing;
www.freshredroses.com
www.FreshRedRoses.com
… a minor point? Maybe, but in a competitive market every tactic helps.
Green Media are Google Adwords Professional Qualified, which means that every single PPC campaign we create and manage is handled in the most appropriate and effective way. We employ all of the techniques described here, as well as some more advanced methods learned through years of experience to achieve the best results. Get in touch to find out how PPC by Green Media can help your business.
In the last of our SEO articles for 2008, we’re exploring one of the most enduringly misunderstood and misused terms in the business - “first page results”.
Don’t get us wrong, first page results are absolutely fantastic, they’re the goal of any SEO - but only ever on lead generating keywords. It’s absolutely pointless achieving first page results on keywords that no-one ever searches for.
When you view SEO as an indiscriminate race to get keywords - any keywords - on the first page of Google, it’s quite a simple process. In reality though, it’s a little more involved, especially if you’re looking to achieve the massive business benefits that SEO is capable of delivering.
The tide is slowly turning on this - just last month Google-guru Matt Cutts discussed the likelihood that “ranking was dead” - but some SEO companies are still pedalling it out as an indication of their so-called expertise. Here’s a little insight into why they’re wrong, and how to go about approaching SEO properly.
Lead generating keywords
Accessible through their PPC interfaces, Google, MSN and Yahoo all have accurate systems that show how many searches any given keywords rack up over a monthly period. Once you know the level of searches that a keyword is generating, you’re in a better position to decide on your target list. If a term doesn’t get many searches, then it’s obvious that while it’ll be relatively easy to rank for, it’ll probably not generate any level of interest. It’s always worth running your initial keyword list through one of these systems, you might be surprised at the level of searches they generate.
Unless you’re working in a genuine niche market with a totally unique product or service you’ll be required to compete, and the competition will naturally be fiercer on the lead generating keywords. This tends to be the point at which SEO companies who bleat on about “first page results” make their excuses and disappear. It’s important to formulate your target keyword list around lead generating terms, or else it’s quite a pointless exercise.
Fluidity of results
No matter how successful your SEO results may be at any given time, it needs to be kept in mind that search engines are constantly evolving, and your competitors are likely to be fighting tooth-and-nail on the very same keywords that you’re optimising your site for. Even if you do get a great result there’s no guarantee you’ll be there at the same time the next week, because when you jump up some positions, your competitors notice and react. However, with a well-strategised SEO programme you’re in for the long haul, and you’ll be able to fight back when required with proven techniques.
Return on investment
This is the single most important factor with SEO, and the reason why the vague claim of “first page results” just doesn’t cut it. SEO is no different to any other type of business marketing in as much as it needs to have a positive return on investment (ROI), otherwise it’s a complete waste of time and money. Adopting the “first page for anything” mentality that’s so common in the industry simply doesn’t achieve ROI - if you’re getting results on unpopular terms then how can it?
In this third article on SEO misconceptions we’re dealing with search copywriting, and particularly the way in which keywords are used.
If you’re aiming to be found by people searching online - which you are - then it’s your use of keywords that will make it happen. If you get your keyword frequency wrong however, you’ll risk poor performance on searches and even getting your site penalised - so it’s important to know what boundaries you’re working within.
Getting it wrong
The overuse of keywords in online copy - either deliberate or unintentionally - is generally known as ‘keyword stuffing’. Like a lot of SEO methods, keyword stuffing did used to work to some degree - once. However, search engines are now incredibly sophisticated compared to what they were, and such crude techniques are spotted a mile away. If your copy is loaded up with keywords to a degree that makes it basically unreadable to your audience, then you’re keyword stuffing.
It’s not just the body content that you should be considering here either, keep in mind your page titles, H1 tags, anchor tags and even navigational link titles - they’re all opportunities to over-do your keywords, potentially by accident.
Getting it right
Getting it right on keywords is easier than most people realise, as long as you keep the real purpose of what you’re doing in mind. “Create a positive user experience” should be the mantra of any SEO-savvy web developer, and the same definitely goes for search copywriters. As we’ve said on Green Notes before, copy really doesn’t need to be prize-winning novelist standard, it should simply be informative, interesting, on-topic and easy to read. If it’s staccato with keyword repetition then it’s unlikely to be any of these.
For more information on search copywriting, read our article on refreshed content or take a look at our search copywriting services page.
It’s commonly known that link building is a key element of search engine optimisation, but as with most SEO factors, taking short cuts can actually have a detrimental effect on your website search performance so it’s vital to do it in the right way. In this article we cover the misconceptions and mistakes that surround link building for search, and look at the most effective way to get results from the process.
The biggest mistake
It’s often thought that simply having a massive volume of backlinks is the way to go with link building, and there are countless companies offering link building as a quick-fire service. However, these services more often than not involve masses of links from irrelevant sites, link farms and generally disreputable sources. Take a quick look in your junk folder and you’re sure to find a promo email from a company selling this service - there’s a very good reason it’s been classed as junk… Using these services results in hundreds (or thousands) of new links being added at once - a great way to set alarm bells ringing when your site is indexed. Once the service is finished, which won’t take long, you’ll be saddled with a load of pointless - and at worst negative - links attached to your website.
Think quality over quantity
Quality, effective link building for SEO is a straight-forward enough process, but it takes a good deal of planning and time to implement correctly.
Building your links steadily and regularly shows search engines that you’re developing organically. Aim for between five and ten quality new links a week, with sites that have relevant themes. Working this way over six months or so will result in a good batch of backlinks that present your website as a reliable and authoritative resource.
Outbound linking
Don’t restrict yourself to inbound links either. Although inbound links are absolutely more important from the mechanics side of SEO, having a good range of useful outbound links can provide a helpful service to your visitors and give them another reason to come back to your site. Think of outbound links simply as good content that enrich the user experience - the ultimate goal of SEO.
Google’s Matt Cutts had some interesting comments this week on the question “is ranking dead?” in an excellent interview with Mike McDonald from WebProNews, which vindicated our entire approach to SEO here at Green Media.
“I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be,” said Cutts. “The fact is the smart SEOs (search engine optimisation companies) are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversions, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.”
“The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about ‘can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase,’” he added.
These sentiments echo precisely what we’ve been saying here at Green Media for a long time now. We mentioned the problems with purely ranking-orientated SEO in a blog entry back in July 2007, when discussing our own approach to search. As we pointed out way back then, it should always be about conversions and ROI - something that’s only now being acknowledged by the wider SEO industry and those at the very top of Google.
If you’re still using an SEO company that is preoccupied with getting “1st page rankings” over all other considerations, then you’re wasting your time and budget. SEO, like any other type of business marketing, simply needs to be accountable - and there’s no value whatsoever in boasting about a 1st page result on a term that absolutely no-one is searching for, no matter how it’s dressed up or shouted about. When your SEO is delivering massive ROI and genuine business benefits across targeted markets, then you’ve really got something to boast about.
We wrote last week about how it was absolutely critical for businesses to continue marketing during the economic downturn in order to keep their message out there in front of prospective customers. Well, exactly the same approach should be applied for website search engine optimisation (SEO).
SEO is about getting your weblink in front of people precisely when they’re looking for what you offer. Looking at it from such a brass tacks angle, it’s the ultimate form of web marketing and as such it really shouldn’t be optional for business anymore - it’s nothing less than essential.
Organic SEO is an incredibly rewarding process at the best of times, but the value of a regularly high-ranking position on a prominent keyword during a downturn cannot be underestimated. It’s as effective as any targeted marketing and it’s out there all of the time, 24/7, on the world’s most used medium.
To find out how you can take advantage of SEO during the downturn and beyond, get in touch.
“Click here” is one of the most enduring terms used online, and has been around from the start. In fact, searching for “click here” on Google brings in an incredible 1.3 billion results, demonstrating how ubiquitous the term has become. It’s the second-nature anchor text choice for a lot of web developers and search copywriters, although moving away from it is so easy - and beneficial.
While “click here” still has great relevance in email marketing for obvious reasons, you’re missing an ideal SEO opportunity if you continue to use it indiscriminately on websites. From both a user accessibility and search engine indexing perspective, the term isn’t exactly the most helpful. Thinking about the search engines, if an anchor text and tag uses some of the keywords relating to the page that it’s linking to, then it’s far easier to classify - boosting the relevancy to a given topic. What’s more, your real-world users will know instantly what they’re clicking on, so you’re enhancing their visit as well. “Click here” doesn’t offer any information whatsoever, other than the presence of a link.
It’s another example that usability and creating a positive web experience should always be at the forefront of your web development and copywriting.
So, try to come out of the “click here” safe zone and you’ll soon find that SEO benefits will follow.
