Understanding the significance of search enables commercially-minded business marketers to construct websites that rise to the top just when prospects and customers are looking for them.

Think about your own information searches online. You use words and alter them, add to them or remove them to better refine the results you receive. Having a search engine optimisation strategy for your business helps to provide a structured approach to identifying the words that your customer and prospects use to then position your products and services to meet their needs. This is achieved by improving your visibility in search engines for the most relevant queries that people are using. If you are interesting and relevant enough, they may take an action to find out more. Using an industrial b2b example, the mining products company Atlas Copco, we can see how a structured approach to on page optimisation can pay dividends.

Keywords

Keywords are critical as they…

Social SEO: Why the right type of interactions matter

It's now well known that driving greater engagement through more social interaction leads to increased Social SEO signals. This in turn helps you to gain higher search engine rankings. In this post I'll explain the techniques I use for increased interaction. Imagine this: You have a friend you see every day, and every time you talk to him, all he wants to talk about is his latest project. He doesn’t listen to anything you have to say, and if you try to interact with him, you either get silence, or another comment relating back to his project. That’s a pretty one-sided and superficial friendship. The way that many brands interact with their fans on social sites isn’t much different. They do a lot of self-promotion and not a whole lot of engagement. They might have the best content in the world, but if…

4 steps and 4 data sources to help define the business case for SEO

Search engine optimisation is one of many digital marketing tactics a business can choose to focus on. Email, pay per click, display and affiliate marketing are all in many companies' marketing armouries, and while the cost per visitor for natural search is zero, in order to achieve organic success within the SERPs significant investment is required. This post looks at one aspect of making the case based on my recent experiences. ‘Black hat’ SEO tactics such as buying links, keyword stuffing and cloaking used to work for those looking to get visibility within the search results, but now a more considered approach to on-page optimisation, content marketing and link earning is required to rank highly for popular search terms. Therefore, in order to get investment and buy-in for SEO it’s not surprising that business managers require a compelling…

How to use people-focused analytics to change how you measure search marketing effectiveness

Most marketers will know the volume of visitors generated by search, but are you using visitor quality to measure the effectiveness of search traffic (organic or paid)? If you are, conversion rate is a key measure effectiveness. In this post I'll explain how to increase it without spending a penny more. It's not intended to be an unrealistic boast instead it's a technique that makes allocating marketing spend and identifying successful campaigns easier and more effective.

Why your Conversion Rate is lying to you

Most people would measure Conversion Rate for a paid search campaign (or organic search) like this: However, this formula has one major flaw, it assumes that all visitors from this campaign have the potential to convert. The reality is that only a fraction of search traffic is convertible,…

A 3 Phased Approach to integrating Content and SEO Audits

In every book about Content Strategy, the recommended process will have an audit as one of the first steps; this is much the same as for Search Engine Optimisation. Granted, there are some specific technical aspects of SEO – particularly regarding server-side issues – that aren't related to content, but SEO audits will also cover onpage issues that need to be forwarded to product or editorial teams. As these disciplines merge, it is useful to get these groups working together, and it saves time to do onpage SEO and content auditing in one go. Thus I suggest combining the audit process as I'll explain here.

Phase One: Gathering Through Crawling

Using Xenu & Excel

Content Strategy books seem slightly wary of using crawlers for content audits. In Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson writes (p.48): "During the audit process… technology can…

Examples showing how SEO recommendations should be briefed for implementation

SEO recommendations are often highly technical and specific in nature. One common mistake businesses make when implementing changes recommended by their SEO Agency is to not clearly communicate why the changes are needed in the first place. Recommendations often pass through two or more people before they get implemented – from the SEO Expert, to a Marketing Exec (non-techy), to their internal/external Developer for example. On some occasions, this means the reasoning behind the recommendation is lost along the way and it can have a devastating effect on your SEO. This article gives insight into a few examples of things that could go wrong if SEO recommendations are misinterpreted during the implementation process...

Canonical tag misrepresentation

As an SEO, recommending the addition of canonicals is a matter of best practice. It can address known duplicate content issues, as well as guarding against…

Why you should place regular analysis at the heart of your SEO 

In this article I will review the importance of regular analysis to help SEOs learn what is and isn’t working on their website, helping to inform optimisation and testing programs.

Why is regular analysis required?

The world around us is forever changing which impacts online behaviour. The key reasons for this are:

1. Online search patterns change

This is driven by several factors, including social trends and fads. A fad can drive a surge in specific search activity, only for this to wilt quickly.

A great example is retail fashion – each season has its theme and only a few of these themes will stand the test of time. Also some trends are cyclical/seasonal so will phase in and out of search e.g. Knitwear – popular at Christmas and through Winter.

Screenshot – declining and rising search keyphrases in the UK market

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Focusing on algorithm changes and new SEO team structures

Here’s a useful infographic from SEO agency Fuzz One. It summarises: Major Google Algorithm updates in 2012 - if you don’t know it, the SEOmoz Google algorithm history gives more detail The new SEO approaches now relevant in 2012 and into 2013 New ways to structure the SEO team - internal and external I found the new team view most interesting, so I’ll pull this out... It shows the creative input needed to be successful in SEO. The social media role is shown, although I hate “SeoCial”. Still it does reflect the joint SEO/Social/Content marketing roles we’re seeing more and more with clients. It's arguably how you integrate SEO resources with other specialists in PR and Social media that's most important. Here is the full infographic: …

Building a business case for investment in SEO

One of the joys of running an SEO business is there's a huge range of organisations out there for you to target: everyone, after all, wants to rank. But actually selling and delivering SEO services to a wide range of organisations can bring challenges as well as fulfillment. I hope this post will be useful both to consultants and agencies selling SEO services, but also marketers and business owners looking to hire SEO agencies. When it comes to selling SEO, I believe one of the biggest challenges we face is engaging with people who have different views of SEO and online marketing. Figuring out how people view their online environment and what it means for them and their business is fundamental to building a business case for SEO and a productive ongoing client-agency relationship.

How misunderstanding of SEO can lead to confusion

I think that there are…

Using analysis tools to diagnose a fall in Google search rankings

Google’s ranking algorithm is increasingly sensitive to the smallest of changes and continues to use an ever-growing number of signals to rank websites. As such, it’s commonplace for site administrators to find themselves in the predicament where natural rankings have dropped, visits have fallen and site revenue or conversions have dwindled. Fortunately – we are here to help! A pro-active approach to any drop in positions is crucial as it’s important that you maintain the trust of your client/boss through this difficult period. There is no issue which can’t be fixed with the correct understanding, approach and action plan.

Dig, Dig and Dig A Little More!

Before we can fix any issues, we first need to understand the root cause of the drop. There are a variety of tools which we can use to help us do this. Google…