Search Marketing Consultant

There are many different ideas about how you should use links to increase your search engine ranking. Some say reciprocal linking (or link swapping) is bad and does not help or can even damage you rankings and others will say it is a good thing. Others will only use 3 way linking systems. Some say that incoming links should only be gained naturally by other website owners linking to your site purely because of the useful content you have. You can increase this by making sure your site contains useful unique content, (sometimes referred to as ‘link bait’). Generally you will want to speed up this process by finding your own link partners.

The way I see it is that one way links are preferred but it is the quality of the link that really matters. Exchanging links with a good quality site that is relevant to your site with the correct anchor text can be more beneficial than a one way link from a low quality site. Google places a lot of weight on your websites incoming links so you need to make sure that sites that link to you are the type of websites that Google likes. Nobody knows exactly how the Google algorithm works but as Google is always trying to improve the searchers’ experience you need to think what would be good for them. Linking with relevant websites that your visitors would also be interested in could only be a good thing.

What type of links should you avoid?
As relevance is highly important, exchanging links with “link farms” will be no good at all. These types of sites will mix all types of links together on one page so the page will have no clear theme. On the other hand exchanging links with structured directory sites can prove beneficial. For example, Google’s favorite directory is the ODP, dmoz.org. If you have a link to your site in this directory it will most probably improve your ranking. It may take a long time to get listed as it is a human edited directory but it is free so well worth adding your site.

When gaining links from other sites you should focus on authority websites that have relevant content. As well as directories, links from related blogs and forums can be useful but be aware that a lot of these sites have ‘no follow’ set on their links which means that the search engines will ignore these links and therefore will not help your rankings. These links can still be of benefit as humans may follow them to your site. Other places to get links from are article sites and social bookmark sites but beware that these also use ‘no follow’.

In conclusion, reciprocal links are not all bad, if used correctly, they can improve your search engine rankings.

Being an SEO specialist I always like to ask our clients, or prospective clients “how did you find us?”. 9 times out of ten they say, ” on Google”.  This is not surprising as Google has over 70% of the search engine traffic and we optimise our web site for the major search engines for phrases like Kent SEO Specialists and Kent Web Designer.  We like to work for local clients as it is good to visit our  clients to discuss projects in detail.
So I asked a caller today “what where you searching for on Google?” and they said “simply ‘the top seo company in kent’ and your site was number one!”
Needless to say, we have another new client.
So beware of cold callers selling SEO, check out the company first, if they can’t get a good ranking for their own site they probably won’t be able to get good rankings for you.

Online advertising spending in the UK has overtaken television expenditure for the first time, a report has said.

Outlay grew 4.6% to £1.752bn between January and July, according to the study by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Read More…

The Internet has always been a very cost effective form of advertising so if you are looking to start advertising your business online and need some help why not give me a call on 01303 849329

Sytec has been optimising one of our client’s new websites for Google Local Search (Google Maps)  The site was completed at the end of July  and now the site is Number 1 on Google for the term building companies Folkestone for both Google maps (out of 3258) and the natual listings (out of  76,000).

So if you are marketing on the Internet locally have a chat with Sytec to see how they can help your business.

Yahoo is planning to scrap their search engine and paid ads next year and join forces with MicroSoft using their Bing search engine.  If you don’t already optimise your website for Bing, now is the time to start. Bing is predicted to have a market share of at least 15% but probably more next year.

Yahoo Site Explorer curently provides a great free tool for analysing incoming links but this may disappear next year. There are a number of tools available that we currently use to analyse backlinks, I recommend: IBP and SEO Elite.

Why not get a professional to carry out all you SEO work and free up your time to run your business and concentrate on doing what you do best.

For a free keyword analysis report contact Sytec Web Design.

The best way to increase your website profits with out increasing your traffic is to improve your conversion rate.  Say your website gets 1,000 visitors per week and your conversion rate is 1%, this means you make 10 sales per week.  By improving your conversion rate by just 1%, to 2% you will double your sales from 10 to 20 per week.

So, how do you improve your conversion rate? I did speak about various ways to improve your conversion rate in a previous post but today I would like to talk about choosing keywords.

The most important part of SEO in the keyword research, but how do you know which keywords are going to give you the best results or conversion rates?

If you use keywords that are too generic and highly competitive you will find it very hard to achieve high rankings and even if you do get a top 10 position you will more than likely find the keyword does not convert very well. This is normally the case with one word key phrases or posibly 2 word key phases.

It is a good idea to consider what your prospective visitors are actually searching for.

In most cases people searching using one or possibly 2 word key phrases are simply researching and are very unlikely to buy or contact you on the first visit to your website.

Examples are golf, mobile phones, insurance etc.

Searches using 2 – 3 word phrases are normally used by people who are narrowing down their research and maybe looking to compare products or prices.

Examples are golf clubs, cheap mobile phones, car insurance etc

Its not until people start to use 3 or more words in their search phrases that they are getting ready to buy or make an enquiry.

So the best and easiest keyphrases to target are normally 3 – 5 word phrases.

By using more specific keyphrases (sometimes known as long tail keywords) you can increase your conversation rate and these phrases are normally less competitive or cheaper if you are using Pay per Click.

In my last post I mentioned that being in a “bad neighbourhood” could affect your search engine rankings.  Your neighbourhood is not only the websites you share links with but can also mean the websites you share hosting or an IP address with.

Dedicated hosting can be expensive so many of us use shared hosting, but who are you sharing with?  If another website on your server has been banned by Google this can affect your site’s rankings or could even get your site banned.  Sharing with websites that sell questionable products may also affect your site.

Shared hosting may also affect your website speed, if another site on the server is very busy it could use up your bandwidth and slow down your website. 

Check who is sharing your server

If your website is sharing an IP address with hundreds of other sites than ask your hosting company to provide you with a dedicated IP address, there will probably be a small fee but it is well worth it.

I have just spent the past few hours going through some of the hundreds of links requests I have received over the past few weeks.  I would say I reject around 85% as they do not meet my criteria.  Even though my requirements are posted on the my websites people still fill in the form with the hopes I might add their link.  This is a waste of time for me and the person requesting the link.

So please, if you are requesting a link on someone’s website, read their requirements first. If you can’t meet there requirements move onto the next site.  You could always send an email explaining you don’t quite meet the requirements but you still think a link on your site would be advantageous to them.

Link exchanges should be benifical to both parties. When you exchnage links the page your link is add to is critical,

1. It must be relevant.
2. It must be visible to the search engines
3. It must not have hundreds of out going links.
4. Having your keyword in the anchor text is a big advantage

If these conditions are not meet then there is little point exchanging links.

So, some link exchanges can work, but be careful, if you start exchanging links with just anyone you could get your site into a “bad neigbourhood” which will have a negative effect on your website ranking.

Link exchanges can improve your search engine rankings but only if they provide your website with quality incoming links.

Some years ago, it was enough to get many inbound links to get high rankings on Google. It didn’t matter from where these links came as long as there were many links that pointed to your website.

As Google and other search engines continually improve the way they rank web pages, getting the right links is crucial if you want to be listed on the first search result page.

Unnatural links can be bad for your Google rankings

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Yes that’s £1.50 per day. What can you buy for £1.50 these days?  Half a pint of beer, a loaf of bread, not much. But for £1.50 you could be pulling in enquiries and sales from your website.

With our new entry level package you will get…

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