» SEO Tips

Typos can be good!

Alan — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:48:58 +0000

A few days ago we stumbled on a number one position on Google for one of our sites. More by good luck than planning in this case, the number one position was for a phrase very relevant to the site in question – but it was a typo – and a VERY common misspelling…

Should you find this at any time – don’t fix it – this is a good thing. Your site will no doubt have your search terms duplicated elsewhere, so no need to worry.

Don’t be afraid also to include common misspellings within you keywords and descriptions. Find a really common one and it can work very well for you…

Search Engine Results Page

Elle — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:33:24 +0000

The search engine results page or SERP is the page(s) of website listings that a search engine shows you in response to submitting a search to that specific engine. Here in Lanzarote, we hear “Google” shouted from the rooftops… and as this is the most widely used search engine, we will concentrate on that one.

There are a number of things you can do to help your website rank highly. But be aware that even if you cross all your t’s and dot all your i’s… you may still not get there if the keywords you are competing for are very common or are part of a saturated market. Everybody wants to be in the number one position… but take a moment and look at your competition. How many other villas are there in Lanzarote, let alone the world? How many other pool cleaners are there? How many other Estate Agents? Bars? Builders? You getting the idea yet?

So you need to look at other differing key words that people may search for you with. If you have a unique company name, then great! But of course people need to know that name first in order to search for you don’t they? This is where other forms of marketing come in.

But this does not mean that you shouldn’t use best practices when designing, maintaining or promoting your site. If you honestly feel that you can not put any extra work into your site once you’ve put it live, then don’t expect to suddenly appear on page one of Google, and to stay there forever, it just doesn’t work like that. But… if you work at optimising your website continuously, you may yet get some brilliant results without spending a huge fortune on different forms of advertising.

Some important factors in helping your site succeed in the SERPs…

Do your research – Firstly you (or your web design company) must perform keyword research to determine what keywords and keyword phrases you are going to design your business around, as this will lay the groundwork for all of the meta data, text and links your site will contain. A decent web design company will do this for you automatically.

As we have already discussed, if you are using only generic keywords, you will have little or no chance to rank highly in the search engines. The key here is to target words and phrases that are more unique and have a bit more substance to them. For example, if you are selling holiday accomodation, you’ll have a better chance of success if you design your site around “luxury holiday villas” or if they are in a particular area, use descriptive elements such as “luxury holiday villas in Lanzarote” or “the finest holiday villas in Playa Blanca”. The longer the keyword phrase and more descriptive, the better chance you’ll have to grab that organic traffic. Designing your site around keywords is the most important element.

Content
It is extremely important to have fresh, unique content. And make sure that each of your pages follows that uniqueness too (which your web designer should see is reflected in the meta data on the page). The Google spiders steam in and try to read as much as they can on your pages – but if they see repetition, or things simply don’t make sense… then they’ll scurry off to another website.

Keep it new!
Search engines love to read new things. So adding, and enhancing your website as often as you possibly can will bring those spiders hurrying back more often for a good old read. If we could all add a new page to our websites every day, with fresh new text, linking it to other pages within our site… those spiders would permanently set up camp – as they do in places such as YouTube, Facebook, and PhotoBucket. The greater number of unique pages you get indexed in the search engines the better. This does of course all take time – and time is precious.

Link-it-baby-link-it!
We’ve already skimmed across the tip of the subject of links elsewhere on this site – but we cannot stress the importance of these enough. This is probably the best way to get those spiders coming-a-hunting. The more inbound links you can get the better… But keep them relevant. Don’t fall into the same trap that others do with pages and pages of completely unrelated links. Aim to achieve at least 1 new RELEVANT link to your site per day – and you’ll be rolling.

Content and Relevant Linking

Elle — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:58:45 +0000

Right, now that we have established that Google is the biggest, let’s move on to a couple of things that you can do to help push your site up the results pages.

We’re obviously not going to list all the things that we, as webmasters, do to help push websites up to that number one page in Google search results – that wouldn’t please our bank manager really now, would it?

But we will happily share just a couple of the things that you can do from the comfort of your own computer.

Content
Think of a search engine as a human being. It wants to know that when it clicks onto your page, that it’s questions will be answered. Open up a Google window, and carry out a search for anything you like. The majority of results on that page will take you to websites that accurately answer that question. That’s how it should be. The content on your website should be relevant to what your site visitors are looking for. The more relevant, informative and fulfilling to your site visitors, the better.

Keep it fresh, keep it accurate, keep it updated. The search engines send their “spiders” into your site to have a look around. If each time they arrive, they see that you have added something new, then they’ll keep coming back. If however, you haven’t changed a thing in quite a while… then they’ll visit less often.

Relevant Linking
There are different kinds of links. Internal Links, which are links on your website that point to other areas within your website. Inbound Links, that other people put on their websites that point to yours. These are very important, because each inbound link is considered a “vote of confidence” by Search Engines. Outbound Links are links on your site, that point to other people. These too, are important, because the Search Engines want to know that you are providing a valuable resource, yet still pointing people to answers they may be looking for. Reciprocal Links, are when you and another website do a “swap”.

Always keep your links relevant. It used to be considered acceptable to list as many reciprocal links as you can possibly cram onto your site, regardless of content, or to submit your site to “Link Farms”. Google is starting to penalise sites that have done this. For example, would you find it useful to find a link about Plumbers in Essex if you were searching for a luxury holiday villa in Lanzarote? Of course you wouldn’t – and neither does Google.