SEO Training

Get found online

Getting found online is not all that difficult.  It is not incredibly easy either.  Of course it depends on how much competition you have.  Why do some sites show up above others? On Google it is a combination of over 200 factors!

In general these are split into two types of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – On page (the actual website itself) and Off page (links from other sites to your site).

For On-page SEO all you need to do is follow Googles Webmaster Guidelines.  Although, there is quite a bit to that, and it may take some time and patience to work your way through it.  There are other issues too.  Try looking up information on keyword density for example.  The web is full of different opinions.  The reason that some people will tell you not to exceed 4% density (4 percent of total text on the page) and others 8% density for example, is that nobody knows exactly how many keywords will get your page flagged for keyword stuffing.

Here is the problem…..

You want your site to get found online for specific keywords (SEO training in the case of this blog for example).  In order to show that the site is all about SEO training, it is tempting to use the phrase lots.  However, if I do that, then it will look like I am trying to influence search engines and they will penalise me for it.  This is not to say that it does not work…. but eventually the chances are your site will plummet down the rankings if for keyword stuffing.  I always advise clients to stick to the webmaster guidelines rigidly.

Off site SEO is where a lot of people come unstuck.  How do you get links to your site?  How many links do you need? Should you pay for links? Does it matter where the links come from?

It is a mine field.  Get it wrong and you will pay for it!  Get it right and your site will reap rewards.  By the way NEVER pay for links! It does matter where the links come from too.  What is more, external link building should be something that is an ongoing practice.  I will be posting more on link building in the future.

If you want to get found online, then it really does pay to get somebody who knows what they are doing to either train you, or do it for you.  This saves a lot of time.  Nobody knows it all (the search engines do not release the details of their criteria) but using a SEO professional who has gained experience from spending time on research as well as experimenting and finding out where some of the limits are pays off.

Be My Valentine ... Google

With Valentines day fast approaching I started thinking about what is wrong with how we think about SEO and Google in particular.

With SEO training Google tends to be the main focus with clients.  They want to climb the Google ranks.  That is because in many ways Google is the only search engine that matters.  However, romancing Google is not how we should view SEO.

Saying “be my valentine” to Google is much akin to saying “be my valentine” to your sweethearts mother.  You will not get the girl/guy by focusing your affections on their mother.  You will get the cold shoulder.

In SEO circles there is much talk of getting some Google love. But Google doesn’t love.  Google rewards the love that others give you.  They reward the relationships you build with other users.  Google are blatantly open about this.  The first three Google webmaster guidelines for content and design deal with making your site easy to navigate, easy to find (sitemap) and creating useful and information rich pages.  In other words they are telling us that we should create websites for people and not search engines.

Our focus should not be on romancing Google, but on romancing visitors and other webmasters (all of whom are human).  Of course you have to keep your would be mother in law happy too.  There is no harm in being charming with Google, but the way to Google’s affections is to concentrate on your content and your visitors.

Unlike most mothers I know, Google is quite happy to see you “sowing your wild oats” with as many people, across as many sites as possible.  Rather than utter “be my valentine” to just one user, it pays to shout it out with gay abandon across the entire universe that is the internet.

If your heart is true (your content is fantastic), you will attract the affections (links) of users across the world.  Human nature being what it is, more links means more visitors.  Charisma is infectious.  Once you gain the affections of some of your users more will come, just because you appear popular.  It’s just like in school, when people want to be associated with the “in’ crowd.  They put effort into getting close to them, creating links with them and boosting themselves through association.  So what have the “in” crowd got in internet terms?  Nothing more than great content.

What makes great content is another discussion entirely.

Don’t be my valentine Google.  I prefer humans to algorithms.

I've heard of a fire engine, but what is a search engine?

The difference between SEO and SEM is that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation while SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing.

Strictly speaking SEO means targeting just search engines.  It is concerned with getting your site as far up the Google, yahoo and Bing rankings for chosen keywords as possible.  Achieving that is done in many ways.

SEM on the other hand has several meanings in regular use.  Some think of it purely as PPC (pay per click) advertising campaigns.  These are the ads you see on the right of the search results in search engines, and occasionally occupying the top slots.  I like to think of it as much more than that though.

When I think of SEM the word marketing takes priority.  I like to think of Search Engine Marketing as encompassing SEO but taking into account the user experience.

Let me expand on that.  A site may be extremely well optimised from an SEO perspective, ranking well in the major search engines, but that does not mean that the site is a good user experience.

It is a mistake to put SEO ahead of user experience.  I’ll give you an example. The following is SEO optimised text

Car washing by the car washing experts.  At Car Washing Ireland we wash cars all day every day.  When it comes to car washing we are the number one car washing company in Ireland.  If your car needs car washing then you have found the right site.  Contact us and one of our mobile car washing units will be dispatched to you and one of our car washing experts will have your car gleaming.  You will be so impressed with our car washing that you will return to car washing ireland again and again.

Actually, that is terrible SEO.  I have exaggerated it hugely.  The point is that SEO optimised text is not necessarily particularly readable text.  If the quality of English is high, then you use different words or phrases to describe the same thing.  This is at odds with SEO, where you want to repeat your key phrases.

The object is to achieve good legible text that a user will read, while retaining a keyword density that is reasonably high (though not much above 5% of total text).  It would be entirely better for both SEO and the user experience to write the above text with far fewer instances of “Car Washing”.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is all about S......elling!

SEM is more holistic.  It encompasses good SEO techniques for on page content (but not at the expense of the user experience).  It also covers Social Media as well as PPC advertising and even banner or button advertising.  Search Engine Marketing is about selling your site online.

A lot of SEO’s make the mistake of using the meta description purely to put in keywords.  Same goes for the page title.

In the case of the meta description it is fairly likely that google does not include that text in any meaningful way in its ranking algorithms.  I am not saying that you should not put keywords into the meta description or page title, but use them to better effect.

Better effect means using them to sell.  To stick with our car washing example, The title can be “Car washing Ireland”, the meta description could read “Get your car washed at home or at work.  We come to you.  Discount for online booking”.  No key words.  Just good descriptive text that helps sell the service.

The whole reason for this post was because I am writing about Social Media and somebody asked me “what has social media got to do with SEO training?”.

Well these days you can’t market your website online without at least paying lip service to social media.  And if you know your stuff (or get Social Media Training) then you can really make it work for you in a big way.  Look at what happened with the Susan Boyle clip on You Tube.  She became an overnight, international sensation, from a clip of an audition!  Wow.  That just does not happen with traditional media.

Why do companies invest thousands of euros in SEO training?  It’s all part of their marketing mix.  SEO is marketing.  Therefore, SEO is SEM and SEM includes SEO.  By the way.  I’ve just broken a rule there.  I’ve overused the phrases again (my site may pay for all this bad SEO!).  I was only playing with words, but be careful.  Remember we are dealing with dumb machines (no matter how good the algorithms are).  They do not see a bit of word play, but rather an attempt at keyword stuffing, which can hurt your ranking.

So, SEM is all about selling.  SEO is just about trying to get better ranking on Google et al.

One of these days I’ll learn to write short concise posts, but I hope that I’ve cleared up the difference between SEO and SEM somewhat.

Links are good for SEO.  The link text is very important.

By linking sites together you can create a loop of links, or a pyramid, or a network.

What use are these?  I actually think that they can be quite dangerous to your SEO.  Conversely they can aid your SEO efforts quite a bit.  It all depends on how you do it.

Google put a lot of time and effort into finding spam (for spam read unnatural) links.

Say I have 20 sites, all hosted with the same company.  These sites will be on the same subnet (first few groups of numbers in your ip address for the site).  A lot of links from the same subnet with the same link text is going to raise flags with google.  They will not necessarily penalise you for it…. but you won’t get the results you may expect.  Large numbers of links pointing to the same pages from one location are suspicious.  If all your sites are on the same subnet it becomes obvious that those links are an attempt to influence search results.

How to get around it.

Building domains purely for SEO purposes does not have the same effect it once had.  Domaining (buying domains for keywords) still has some clout, but not as much as it once did.

Be careful, remember, that a site that is full of nonsense will be treated accordingly.  Build each site with the purpose of making that site rank well.  Then links to your target site will carry some weight.  Same goes for blogs.  Write good information in a blog that people will reference and do not over-link to your target site.  Link to different pages on your target site and only use text that is relevant to both the blog post and the page you link to.

In short.  Keep the number of links down.  My preference is for a pyramid structure… linking from multiple domains to one domain.  I sometimes interlink the lower tier domains too – but only if it is natural for them to link.  The subject matter has to be relevant.