What 3 elements make up SEO?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the natural or organic method of getting your website placed higher in the search engines, as opposed to paying for online advertising.

As a result it is a task that is never ending, always requiring you to be one step ahead of your competitors, and any successes tend to be short lived, as Google responds to all new material that is posted online, and it is always the latest contributions that are indexed at the top.

But it is a process that should not be ignored. Even if your website or latest blog post reaches its desired placing for a short time, it has got there, and who knows will look at it or read it while it resides in its lofty position. The more times you manage to attain this prize, the higher the chances of recognition, acknowledgement and conversion through response.

To explain simply, SEO work on three main elements: new content, links and keywords. I know all SEO experts out there will be saying ‘Oh, but you’ve forgotten this element’, and of course they’re right, as experts they should have many tricks up their sleeves to attain the final goal: get as high as you can in Google. But if you understand these three elements, there is no reason why anybody can’t give it a try.

New Content: search engines rely on their spiders: mathematically driven robots that ‘crawl’ the net looking for new material that has been posted. Once found, they feed greedily on it before passing it onto their master, the search engine, to be indexed. If your website or blog, especially the blog, has regularly published new content, it stands a better chance of being placed higher than any old material from your competitors.

Links: spiders need to have a method of entering and leaving your website or blog. Think of links being the doors or portals spiders use to find new content. Incoming links allow spiders to enter and feed, and outgoing links (especially if they are relevant to the content and final destination) will enable them to leave and visit other suitable sites, giving you brownie points as they do so.

Keywords: relevance is vital for spiders to work effectively. Keywords should be relevant to the content, destinations of links, and popularity of searches, eg what people are searching for at that moment. It would be wise therefore to properly research suitable keywords that are not only popular but truly reflect your new material and business. It’s simply like a game of snap, and the best results are attained through correct recognition of a match!

Now that you know these three elements, take them into consideration next time you post up something new on the net.

Internet spiders and how they help websites

An internet spider is a robot that crawls around the world wide web. They are also sometimes called crawlers. They use an algorithmic programme that follows links throughout the net searching for new content. This then fetches the new webpages and adds them to the search engine indexes. Google is a crawler-based search engine, as it relies on spiders to automatically create its listings.

Some spiders have even been given names, such as Mozilla for Netscape, Scooter for Alta Vista and Slurp for Hotbot. They leave evidence of their visits just like human surfers in analytics, code and stats.

Spiders enter and leave websites through links, which act as portals throughout the net. That’s why it’s important to have lots of incoming links to your website to encourage spider activity. If you provide lots of new content for spiders to feed on, they will remember to visit your site more frequently.

Spiders only see text on the webpages, therefore pictures and Flash programmes are invisible to them. You can add alt tags to your pictures which are written descriptions behind them, enabling spiders to understand your images.

Spiders are programmed to look for new content with links, tags and keywords. They particularly relish appropriately selected keywords combined with extremely relevant links and their destinations.  They don’t like hidden or invisible keywords, as they think they’re being fooled. If your site’s navigation is complete, spiders will visit every page, indexing anything that’s new. If you treat spiders well, they are more likely to return.

Spider top tips

• provide lots of new content for spiders to feed on
• remember to put alt tags behind your pictures
• gather as many relevant inbound links as you can for spiders to enter
• remember to add your tags within your blog posts
• create contextual links (linked key-phrases) for maximum effect
• make sure your links go to relevant destinations
• blogs are visited hourly by spiders, unlike websites who may not be visited for several weeks

Keywords should entertain blog readers as well as search engine spiders

Keywords or key-phrases are particular words that are the most searched for in search engines. Found through websites such as Wordtracker, they are, in fact, search engine spider food, and including them in your blog posts will help raise your status in search engine optimisation (SEO).

Keywords or key-phrases should be inserted into four places in your blog post:

• in the headline (because it later becomes the permalink or URL for that post)
• in the first paragraph (preferably in the first sentence so that both readers and spiders immediately ‘get’ the subject)
• in the middle (because that’s a place spiders look)
• in the final paragraph (another place spiders are programmed to search)

But remember to keep your writing entertaining as well as being aware of how relevant keywords are to the subject.

I was reading a post about article marketing the other day and I noticed how the author had incorporated his keywords into the post. He had followed the concept stated above to the letter. The final paragraph was so bad (every sentence had the keyword either at the beginning or the end), the result was it was so incredibly boring to read I didn’t bother continuing.

Here are some other points it might be good to take into consideration if you wish to retain readership as well as spider interest:

• be aware that people skim read an article or post to see if it is relevant
• bullet points are a good way of highlighting elements
• keywords should be positioned also to catch the reader’s attention
• only the first 25% of an article is truly read before the reader decides it is worth continuing with or not
• small paragraphs also helps with the reader’s comprehension as well as attention span
• the average amount of time spent reading a blog post is 96 seconds
• therefore short and sweet posts fare better than long ones

Another keyword tip I picked up is that spiders cannot ’see’ punctuation, so if you adjust your sentences by inserting full stops or commas into the middle of your key-phrase, this will add enough variance to help maintain readership interest.

Use keywords for your reader’s benefit as well as strategically placed for spiders, therefore not penalising your audience purely for search engine optimisation.

Websites and blogs: how are they different?

Actually a blog is a kind of website, as they have many similar attributes.

They both occupy a presence on the internet, use an URL or web address, need a host server to keep them online, contain information such as text content, pictures, links and keywords, both benefit from search engine optimisation and can be tracked through Google Analytics.

But why don’t we call blogs websites? What is it that makes them different?

The difference is in their programming, and how they make use of Web2.0. The are pre-runners of social networking before Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. They thrive on interaction, new content, feeds and optimisation.

Blogs are designed to be self-editable. This means you don’t to pay a web designer to make changes or add content. You can update them through very easy access (a username and password) from any computer in the world. The programming is self-contained, and if you can write in Word, you can update a blog.

They thrive on being updated frequently and regularly, their programming is designed to attract search engine spiders who are looking for new content all the time. This is very good for web optimisation which puts blogs higher up the search engines than websites. Another consideration is that blogs are visited by spiders hourly, whereas websites could wait for months.

Unlike websites, blogs only update new material each time it is posted. Every time a website is updated the new stuff supersedes the old content, whereas blogs store previous entries like a news-roll, each post dated accordingly and assigned it’s own URL for access at a later date.

Blogs are designed to encourage interactive communication between author and readers. Those who comment can link back to their own sites, and this content is also considered as new material by internet spiders. This concept is not available in ordinary websites, except through sign up forms, and then contributors cannot view afterwards what they have written.

And another consideration to note: blogs are much cheaper to create and maintain!

OK, so what else makes blogs better?

Blogs are created to help businesses to spread their expertise, explain what their business does in different ways, maintain a relationship with their visitors and customers, offer subscription services for regular contact, channel traffic back to relevant websites, and can be fed to other websites like social networking for a higher readership.

Most websites, especially ‘brochure style’ ones, are static and once created are rarely updated, and can’t provide an opportunity to explain everything as space is often limited. In fact, over cluttering your pages with too much information can be counter-productive. Visitors will not return for new content, websites are unlikely to get bookmarked, and only through a sign up form to a newsletter can the business maintain a relationship with potential customers.

But this is only my opinion, what do you think about this subject? Since this a blog, leave a comment in the box below to share your views.

‘Blackberry’ doesn’t say ‘babies clothes’ to me

One young entrepreneur was asking for advice on her babies’ clothes business on a women’s business forum. She had decided to call it ‘Blackberry Babes’ and wondered if it was a good name or not. This is my response:

I’m still a little confused why you need to use ‘blackberry’ – is there some underlying reason for this? I immediately thought of the hand-held electronic system. I certainly agree that ‘babies’ is better than ‘babes’.

I should take a good luck at the USP of your product. What is special about it? What does it have that your competitors haven’t? Does it use special fabrics, are the colours significant, does it cater for specific kinds of babies’ requirements, or what?

Then I would think about how it change the lives of the babies, or their mothers. Concentrate on that phenomenon when you do your marketing. For example, an ironing service shouldn’t talk about what they do, ie your ironing, but what their customers can do if their ironing is done by the company, ie free time with the family, weekends free from household chores, no more ironing piles towering on your washingmachine! You should be describing ‘what’s in it for them’, not your product, because customers couldn’t care a tinker’s toot about you or your business, they only care about how it affects themselves.

What is so special about your babies clothes that marks it out as different from all the others, has a special element that makes the recipients lives better, and offers excellent value? Take these facts, work out your ‘keywords’ and create a name using them. For example, a courier service called ‘Fetch it now!’ – says exactly what’s on the tin.

Why this and not ‘blackberry’? ‘Blackberry’ doesn’t suggest to me baby clothing, it suggests to me more of food, or blackberry stains on sticky babies. If you are going to have a website for your company (hopefully an e-commerce one where mothers can buy on-line) by having a keyword rich name will not only make it easier for the search engine spiders to find your company, but easier for search engine users who type in those ‘keywords’ in their searches for baby clothes, not to mention the mothers who will understand exactly what you can do for them.

The result may be a little more boring than ‘Blackberry babes’ but if you want to survive on the internet, being cute and pretty won’t cut the chase.

New business? Want a website? My advice is: don’t!

You’re an entrepreneur and you want to start up a business. Great.

The first reaction to getting a slot on the internet is to get a website. Wrong!

Why wrong? This is because websites are notoriously expensive things! How much cash do you have? I suggest you should have a good think before you go throwing it away on unnecessary, inappropriate, uncostworthy things such as a website.

But surely everybody needs a website, or they won’t be taken seriously by prospective customers?

Of course you need a presence on the internet – it’s a requisite requirement nowadays. But not a website. What you need is a blog, and a good grasp of social networking. That’s how you get yourself known on the web. Only when you’ve made it, got a load of followers, built up your list of contacts, made some money, then you can go ahead and get yourself a website. By then you will know exactly what you want it for, and will build it with a proper purpose.

The trouble is, so many people get themselves a website, and it just sits there, looking pretty, and doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. They haven’t got the money to update it, because unless they have built it themselves they will have to pay a fortune to their webmaster to make any changes.

Now, if you have a blog, that’s exactly what you can, and should, do. This is because blogs are self-editable; they thrive on new material because they are designed for it. They are also little web magnets for internet traffic, as the search engine spiders are programmed to visit blogs extremely frequently, just in case there is something new for them to ‘read’. If they like what they find, and there are lots of keywords and key-phrases that match up to what is ‘hot’ at that moment, then you can get really high in the search engines!

And the other side of the coin is to get into social networking. The beauty of the web is that you can link and ‘feed’ all your blog content into social networking, so a lot more people can start reading about exactly what your business does – as long as you have written about it. And blogs are the place to write about your business: frequently, easily and regularly.

Don’t hide under a bushel – reach out and network. Tell the world about what you do. If people like what they read, you can start to make friends, contacts, business, liaisons, strategic alliances or whatever, all on the internet, through a relatively inexpensive blog – not by wasting your money on a website!

And does it work? There are plenty of businesses who are extremely successful today and have all started with just a blog, even before social networking got off the ground. Blogs are the beginnings of social networking, it’s just that the interactive side of the web (Web2.0) has developed a bit more recently…

Would you like to learn how blogs aren't scary?

Live teleseminar: Thursday 14 May

• Have you been thinking about setting up a blog recently but have been putting it off?

• Do you want to know how a blog can help your business?

• Do you already have a blog but want some more tips on how to improve it?

Would having a blog help you market your business better?

Sometimes just having a website is not enough – you need to have somewhere where you can express yourself, providing on-going news about your business, educate your customers, promote new events or products – all in an environment that is publicly seen throughout the net.

A ‘brochure style’ website is far more difficult to update, needs the use of a webmaster and is seldom visited by the internet spiders. It’s a space on the web that just sits there, looking pretty, but doesn’t encourage interaction from your customers.

So what is different about a blog?

A blog is self-editing, thrives on regular input and spiders visit blogs hourly. It also uses applications to spread your word around the web easily, efficiently and automatically.

It encourages and succeeds on feedback and input from your readers, and can also be used as an archive for your articles and other information, as each post is allocated its individual URL.

The free software provided by the blogging platform is excellent for search engine optimisation, too.

So if you are interested in finding out more about blogs, then join me live for an hour’s teleseminar class (or if you can’t make the day a recording will be available).

You will discover how to:

• publicise your business to a wider audience

• increase your expert status

• let customers check you out before they buy

• bring more traffic to your website

• interact with potential customers

• provide an archive for your newsletter material

• work better with search engine optimisation

• help link you to social networking sites

But above all I want you to realise that blogs aren’t difficult technology to master, and that everybody can and should have one!

I will reassure you how unscary blogs are, and there will be a chance for those on the call to ask questions and provide their own opinions.

When is it? Thursday 14 May

What time is it? 8pm – 9pm (GMT+1)

What happens if you’re not free at this time? Register, and you will be automatically sent a recording of the teleseminar for you to listen at your leisure. Don’t forget if you have any questions, you are welcome to email them to me before the event.

What else is included? I will also send a pdf of the teleseminar’s notes and resource information so you won’t have to write everything down.

How much is it? The initial cost of this seminar is £27 -

but wait – if you book before Friday 8 May at 8pm you can register for only £17!

You will also be eligible for a competition to win my first two blogging packages for free!

• Book before 8pm on Friday 8 May to get the call for only £17 plus the recording

• Enter your name into a draw to receive first two blogging packages f*ree!

Click here NOW to register and reserve your place – and begin your journey to blogging success!

I really look forward to hearing you on this call.

Alice

Create a call to action on every webpage

I really don’t mind giving my opinion on website design. And it’s always so nice to comment on a really good one for a change.

A photographer friend of mine asked for my reaction to his new website design while it was being renovated. My first reaction was very positive, with its clean, clear, crisp lines providing a very professional layout. It was the grey words and logo on the white background that did it for me – how nice to see an uncluttered presentation with plenty of white space and light!

But I felt compelled to provide some comments to increase his website efficiency:

The index page should work to the three second rule. Three seconds to make up their minds that this is the right website and what they should then do. Getting the visitors to do something is paramount; they should be encouraged to go further into the site to learn more, or sign up to something with a suitable incentive (this is to gather their details for future communications). The last thing you want is for them to leave!

Also, don’t overload other pages with detailed content. My friend’s grey text may have looked elegant and contributed to the spatial atmosphere that was so pleasing, but it did make it very difficult to read in large quantities. Websites are not like books. People don’t find it easy to sit down and read through webpages with a cup of tea. Also if they are surfing they usually do not have the time to plough through densely packed paragraphs.

Your accompanying webpages should act like little landing pages for specific subjects. This means they should contain the same structure and marketing elements as the index page, because spiders direct surfers to the most relevant page to their search, and this may not be the index page of the website. Allow for drop-in visitors for that particular subject, and adapt the page for the three second rule too.

Design your webpages with the initial concept of getting your customers to make contact. Once you’ve got them across your threshold then you can give them all the necessary detail to seal your capture. Your content should be delivered quickly and concisely with poignant and relevant information. Separate each benefit with bullet points or paragraphs. This allows the eye to rapidly choose what it wants to read and then enables the reader to digest and take action.

Contextual Connections

Just a quick post to emphasise the importance of using contextual links for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) purposes.

This is when the reader sees a relevant word or phrase which is a link going to a particular webpage. The URL for this link isn’t the same as the word or phrase that is visible, the information or instructions behind what the reader sees takes the link to its destination.

For example, visit my website to find out more about Alice Designs isn’t my website’s URL, nor is it immediately visible, but if you were to mouse over that link above and look below where that URL is shown at the bottom of your web browser, you would see it. And if you were to click on it, it would go to my website.

Contextual links are excellent food for spiders (SEO bots), especially if the link phrase itself is stuffed full of keywords or relevant words to the URL in question. If the information in front of them matches up with what they find at the other end of the link, then that earns you extra brownie-points.

You can also use contextual links to help towards disguising your email link against spammers. OK, this won’t necessarily deter the sophisticated versions, but usually simple bots won’t recognise a cleverly constructed contextual link as a email address, thus reducing your susceptability for spam. Something like Want to know more? Then ask me a question doesn’t gjve the impression of being an email link to an ordinary spider because it doesn’t contain the ‘@’.

And for goodness sake avoid using ‘click here’ everywhere, this is a totally useless form of contextual link. Be far more imaginative!

What advantages are there in a blogsite?

Most of us understand the concept of a blog: an on-line diary that is either used for personal reasons or to promote a business. It is an excellent tool for SEO (search engine optimisation) and to bring more traffic to your website and other on-line media, and allows you to explore, explain and express yourself and your business in a way that is not possible on a website. Multiple posting regularly each week will keep the spiders and search engines busy, and your audience will learn to expect frequent missives from you to learn the latest idea or share your successes and secrets, as well as receive advance notice of any events your are organising, be party to special offers that are available and be kept in the link of how your business is progressing. It’s almost as if your readers have a privileged toe-hold that the rest of the world is missing out on.

Now a blogsite combines the flexibility of the blog and its ability for frequent updates, immediate SEO and access onto other people’s PCs through RSS feeds, with the static backdrop of a website, including fixed information pages, a culture media for e-commerce systems, and the comfort of a navigable and visual brochure status through the world wide web. Your URL can be adapted for SEO and pay-per-click, your blog headlines are stuffed full of keywords combined with relevant tags, and you can take advantage of Web 2.0 for visitor interaction, as well as gathering their contact details to invite them to join your newsletter. All good stuff for generating leads and traffic.

Now another advantage of a blogsite is that it allows the owner to edit and add to contents without the need of a web designer.  Apologies to all those web designers out there, but not everyone wants to pay through the nose to change their text, create new pages, add pictures and frequently update their website to keep the SEO active. I consider myself privileged to be able to change my website at a drop of a hat, but this advantage is not available to all, especially if you’re not ‘techy’.  The beauty of a blogsite is that it is relatively easy to change the contents once it is set up, and posting up blogs is as easy as pie. Just think of the flexibility of adapting your on-line presence to whatever you want, whenever you want.

Have you considered a blogsite?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a website that achieves almost immediate recognition from search engines and benefits from frequent updates that are achievable by you and not a web-designer?

This is all possible from a ‘blogsite’, a combination of a website and a blog from WordPress, the blog provider I use for my own blog here, but the difference is that a blogsite needs to be hosted and is obtainable from wordpress.org, not like my free blog from wordpress.com.

Think of it as a blog with static pages like a website.  Once main advantage is that these static pages can include shopping carts and other e-commerce activities, something the blog-police disallow on free blogs. It uses an ordinary URL like a website, unlike my blog URL which has to include wordpress within it. Each post has a permalink that contains more beneficial SEO qualities, and is not over-long with the date, category, abbreviated blog title and other unnecessary information.

Because a blogsite has a blog incorporated within it, it is picked up by the search engines within hours, unlike an updated website which can take weeks.  Having such immediate recognition helps towards building up your relationship with your clients, and yes, you can include autoresponder forms for your newsletters too. All this is, of course, enhanced by frequent blog posting, as this keeps the spiders happy and all those lovely contextual links get to work on your other websites and internet activities.

And of course the blog part takes advantage of getting more traffic through integrating with Web 2.0, the new phase the internet is going through which includes encouraging web interaction with visitors. Stuff your articles with keywords and tags, not only in the content but more importantly in the headlines as well, and keep everything short and sweet yet provocative to encourage comments, feedback and suggestions. Frequent visitor interaction enhances SEO, especially when it is of value.

Many Layered Word Cake

Last week I ventured into the world of words in business. One aspect to consider is the words used in a website. Your webpages should be relevant to your campaign, so research into your target audience and then produce benefits for them: find the pain and offer a solution.

Dont’ forget to elaborate on your individuality or speciality, and you can make it more important by relating a successful scenario, or provide a series of examples and think up a brilliant call to action they cannot refuse. Gather customer details in return for something of value, to be used to form a relationship. But above all eliminate the complication factor: take your customers by the hand and gently lead them in the right direction: make it obvious but not condescending, enticing and relevant, worth-while but not dull.

Investigate into relevant website keywords by taking a step back and thinking like a potential customer; undertake research into what people type into a search engine to find your business and go to websites like Wordtracker.com to find out what the latest trends are and how surfers think.

If keywords are the building bricks of a website, then the tags in the code (behind the scenes) represent the mortar. These use the keywords to provide the necessary food to please the ‘spiders’ (search engine robots) and give them something varied and interesting to do. Links also contribute to spider happiness and come in the form of anchor, incoming or contextual (internal, external or descriptive), leading to lots of activity rewarded by recognition and eventually a higher search engine position!