When the campaign ends…paragraph and section headers for SEO

Continuing on from my earlier article the next item down on the list of things to pay attention to was paragraph and section headers. These are a very simple and effective way of letting the Search Engines know what words they should pay attention to and to give your keywords additional weighting on the page.

Traditionally when writing a document, you would put paragraph or table headings in bold and maybe increase the font size to show your readers that the title of the paragraph or table was “Racing Bikes” for example. However, for SEO you should always ensure that it is set as a header. Headers look like the below in their rawest forms:
<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6>

Most good Content Management Systems will give you the option of making a piece of text into a header rated 1 – 6 within the actual text editor. These should normally be set and styled by your web designers so that they are in keeping with your site’s look and feel. Generally speaking page titles are set as H1’s with every sub-category underneath that being a H2 and so on down to H6. I must admit though that I have never used a H6, at that stage you might want to come up with a different way of structuring your information!

When creating your paragraph headers, ensure you use keyword rich, descriptive text. So if I wanted to create a page on the types of services offered by Kent House with a specific focus on Staffordshire, I would structure the page a little like this:

Kent House, Staffordshire based online marketing agency – our services

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Staffordshire based companies

We have a great SEO track record for clients, helping them to achieve much improved rankings in Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
Work directly with our Internet Marketing Manager Yvonne Conway to improve your company’s search engine results.

Website design for local Staffordshire companies

Kent House have been designing websites for big and small companies across Staffordshire since 2001. Give us a call today to see what we can do for you!

And so on through each of our services…So remember when you are creating your pages, ensure you use set headers for paragraph and section headings rather than simply using basic formatting.

When the campaign ends…page titles

There is always a worry that after spending thousands of pounds on an SEO campaign with an agency, your site will lose its positioning in the SERPs once the campaign is over and you begin to add new content yourself.  Therefore I have come up with a guide on adding content to your site to help you overcome this worry and to continue the work where your search engine optimisation agency left off.

When adding new content there are 6 key areas you need to be aware of.

• Page Titles
• Paragraph or Section Headers
• Words in bold and italics
• Internal links
• Images and Alt Tags
• Keyword selection

For the purpose of this first article I will focus on Page Titles and how they can be “optimised” for search. Before I do that a quick explanation of page titles is probably in order. The page title is what you can see in the top bar of your web browser – it generally shows the website’s name and some blurb about the business or the site. It is prime SEO real estate and a very quick and easy way to improve your on page optimisation.

For a number of reasons page titles are one of the most important aspects of search engine optimisation. Firstly, because they are the first thing that is displayed when a search engine shows your page, so they should always be relevant, concise, descriptive and encourage people to click on your result. Secondly because they are the first thing a robot will see when it comes to your site and thirdly because they are a great way to get some more keywords onto the page and make your site relevant to the crawler for a search term.

When coming up with page titles there are several schools of thought on how to structure them. The two predominant theories go:

(A)    Company Name |Section | Product or Service
e.g.
ABC Ltd | Mountain Bikes | The Brilliant Mountain Bike 2.1

(B)    Company Name | Brief description of what is on the page
e.g.
ABC Ltd | Specialists in mountain bikes such as The Brilliant Mountain Bike 2.1

I personally prefer the second variant as it gives a description of your business which then appears in the SERPs, giving your company a more human face and encouraging people to click on the result. However, when done well either option will help your positioning and continue your site on its way to a page 1 result.

Managing your website’s content

More and more people are coming to see us about wanting to manage their site’s content. This struck me as very surprising the first time I came across it as I had always had access to my own websites when I worked within organisations. The thought of having to pay someone every time I wanted to make a change or add a new page would have sent a shudder down my spine! Who has the budget for that?!

There are only two instances where this kind of thing is acceptable for me. Firstly, if there is a phased project where you need a site RIGHT NOW and the only way to get that done is to let your website developers do it and get it live within the limited time available. At that point, sure you are going to be charged when you want to make a change because there is not enough time to get the site live, to train you and for you to work with the developers. Phase 2 or 3 of your project will then see you being armed with all the tools you need to manage the new site.

The second instance where I can understand people not wanting a content management system is if you truly are on a limited budget and only need a small brochure style site. At that point, yes pay the upfront fee for a limited number of pages and hope that in 3 months you will not want to make any changes to your site. If you do, keep your fingers crossed that you have the budget to pay your developers again to make said changes.

Get a website for £599!

In the world of SEO, content has always been king and getting new, keyword rich pages onto your site is a great way to help your organic search results. Therefore why would web development companies make it so difficult and expensive for you to do this?

The answer lies in the fact that they offer “5 page websites from £599” or “8 page websites from £899”. Using this pricing strategy for web design is a great way to lure people in and then start charging them any time they want to make a change, add a news story or add new pages. From a client point of view, you may have no other choice as you cannot afford to pay anymore than the upfront fee of £599 but, over the life of your affordable new website you would have paid for a well designed, well structured content management system 5 times over and made all the changes you wanted!

Think long term

If you are interested in doing well in the search engines, becoming an authority in your industry or just regularly updating your site to add new images, stories, products and pages you need to invest upfront in a content management system (CMS) or go back to night school to learn how to edit your site in flat HTML. The cost of a CMS may seem big initially but think about the huge benefits to you and your organisation. Do you want to find yourself in a position where you would like to add a new page or fix spelling mistakes on your site, but the cost to do so is not quite in the budget that month?

The Kent House Design and Technology Seminar

Throughout the year Kent House run a series of events on various topics including SEO, Design, Website Development and Internet Marketing. On 22 June we will be holding a free seminar on Design and Technology and how getting the balance right can improve your online presence. The event will take place at Keele Hall, Staffordshire.

Download the PDF Invitation for more information.

For this upcoming event we have secured the services of Julius Wiedemann – author of Guidelines for Online Success and one of the World’s leading experts on design and marketing. Julius will be giving the keynote presentation and plans to focus on the evolution of design online and take a look at how design has changed how we do business from branding to emails to mobile marketing.

Our very own Kevin Holdridge, will discuss ways in which design, technology, and marketing can work harmoniously together online. He will show examples of how many companies get this badly wrong, thus wasting their money and damaging their market position.

The seminar aims to help local businesses and organisations understand how to get the best return from investment in online channels such as the Web and email. It will do this by focusing on how to get the relationship right between the technology, design and marketing of a site.

The event would be suited to anyone with an interest in marketing, design and websites and more critically people interested in making their website work harder for them by achieving better results in the Search Engines. I have included the event program below.

If you are interested in attending, please register online or alternatively send me an email with all of your details.

Event Program

Session 1
How we got here – A brief on the evolution of media, communication and design.

Session 2
Your site – Design and Usability – How to integrate great design into your site without compromising on usability.

Session 3
Return on Investment – How to maximise your investment in the online world.

Session 4
Design, usability and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – How to design an effective, easily navigated site yet still do well in Google.

Search Engine Market Share

This is just a very quick check in to give you the latest update on Search Engine Market Share.

Google is still number one with a share of 73.32% of the search market. Yahoo! comes in distant second with 15.78%. Ask, MSN and Live are at 3.93%, 3.52% and 2.11% respectively.

Although Google has the largest share, it is important to remember that 16% of the world’s internet surfers is a HUGE number and one which could make you millions – moral of the story, don’t forget the little guys when thinking about search marketing. The almost frenzied need to get to page one and number one on Google should not overshadow the fact that  Yahoo!, Ask, MSN and Live are equally as important and worthy of a certain percentage (maybe 16%?) of your time!

Google AdWords Professional

Last week I passed my Google AdWords exam and have to admit that it was an unwelcome return to my university days of blind panic and “have I done enough??”.  However, panic was unnecessary, I passed and I have the logo to prove it.

There is remarkably little online outside of Google itself that can help you towards acquiring the accreditation and this really surprised me, surely with the number of people out there working in SEO and PPC someone would have written something, a cheat sheet some detailed help but no! One thing did seem to crop up time and again on forums and blogs– a general consensus that the questions are vague and open to interpretation. I could not agree more and this increases the difficulty of the exam considerably.

However drawing on my experience and the fact that I had swotted up on all things AdWords related in the AdWords Learning Centre, I passed and am safely among the ranks of the qualified for another two years.

If you have any PPC or SEO questions, give me a call or send me an email, I am always happy to help.

Internal Optimisation – Header Tags

A great place to start with SEO after you have decided on your keywords, is your section headers – your <h1>’s to <h6>’s. These are simple to change for even the most technology-phobic among us. When a Search Engine Robot is scanning your site it will put more emphasis on these than on the underlying copy. Therefore always try to include your keywords in your headers.

If you are lucky enough to have a copywriter to fill your site for you, always remember that although headings like “we do our best for you” may sound great and look “glossy” they are useless for SEO. A more suitable heading would be “ABC Ltd’s customer service policy is the best in Manchester” or “ABC Ltd’s customer service policy is the best in the toy making industry”. In these headings you have your company name – assuming you will want to be found under your company name – and either your location or your industry. These will more than likely be among your keywords and therefore carry more weight for a Search Engine if they appear in a section heading too.

Always use header tags. If you are building a list, the list title should be a header, if you have a table, the table label should be a header. Additionally, every page should have at least 3 sets of header tags, for example a <h1> for the page title, a <h2> for main section headings and a <h3> – <h6> for lists, image labels, table names, sub-sections and so on. Always remember to include at least one of your keywords in each of your header tags.

The Kent House development team always set up header tag templates for <h1>’s to <h6>’s as standard and they are exceptionally easy to apply in SiteManager. However, whoever your web developer, they should do the same and if they have not, challenge them on it, it is a very basic part of any website development and should not be neglected as it is a key part of SEO and a key part of any site’s look and feel!

Search Engine Optimisation FAQs

Whenever a prospective client comes to meet with us about a new SEO Project they always have a list of questions relating to their SEO Campaign and I have compiled a list of the most popular questions below. Hopefully after reading through them you will get a better idea about the limits and the benefits of SEO and perhaps start to see how it could help you and your business.

Can search engine optimisation techniques be applied to any website?

Yes, as long as your site is not password protected as this will not let the search engine spiders collect information about your site. Poor website design and development, as well as unsuitable website technologies can also hinder the search engine spiders. As search engine optimisation is used to improve a spider’s ability to index sites more easily, this would be achieved by removing these barriers when the website is redeveloped.

Will the appearance of my website change after it has been optimised?

This will depend on the structure and coding of the site. Usually, the coding and underlying navigational structure can be improved for search engine optimisation without changing the appearance of the website.
Changes to the look of the website may only be necessary if it uses elements that cannot be replicated by the use of alternative techniques. These include elements such as frames, JavaScript navigation, Flash, dynamic content, or pages that require the user to login in order to see the content. However, in most cases, the use of alternate techniques and coding can mean that the look of your pages remain visually unchanged.

How do you know which keywords and phrases should be used?

Firstly we take a list of keywords and phrases provided by the client. As the client is an expert in their field, they often have a vast knowledge about their clients, products, services and customers, which leads to the generation of the first keywords and phrases list.
Secondly, the words and phrases are analysed and the KEI (Keyword Efficiency Index) is generated for each of them. This is a statistical score that is generated from the number of times the word or phrase is searched for, against the number of competing pages. This allows us to see which words and phrases would be best used on your site, and for which search engines it would be best for.
Thirdly, after seeing our evidence-based report advising you which keywords and phrases will be the best for you, you make the decision which ones you want to use and which ones you don’t.

What is the difference between ethical and unethical Search Engine Optimisation?

Ethical search engine optimisation involves using only high-ranking keywords and phrases that are relevant to the content of the website in order to improve its position on search engines result pages (SERPS).
Unethical search engine optimisation involves deliberately using high-ranking keywords and phrases that are unrelated to the content of the site in order to misdirect traffic to the site and artificially inflate the website’s ranking in the search results. This reduces a search engine’s ability to return relevant search results, and so many of the main search engines have identified a number of search engine optimisation techniques that are unacceptable to use on web pages. If a search engine finds that a website has used these techniques, they may impose a ranking penalty or ban the site from their index.
An ethical search engine optimisation will not involve any technique that is recognised as being unacceptable to any search engine and our company takes pride in offering the most ethical SEO services to our customers.

How quickly can you see the results from the search engine optimisation?

Unfortunately, it can take some time for search engine optimisation to generate results. It depends on a number of factors, but primarily the competitiveness of the keywords and keyphrases used in the search engine optimisation. This can be anything from under a month for uncompetitive key phrases, from 3-6 months to get into the top 30 of a large search engine, or up to a year to achieve stable first page rankings in the main search engines. On average, Google requires an extra three months to get the same results. We therefore recommend that clients who need instant website traffic initially have a “pay-per-click” advertising campaign alongside the SEO.

I have been with an SEO Company for the past year, but still have a page rank of 0 and I am not appearing anywhere near the first page on Google – why is that?

Like most web related areas, SEO has a number of unethical companies promising first page results and high page ranks in the first few months but delivering very little. This poses a huge problem for both the client and experienced SEO companies offering good results based on genuine research and hard work!
In order to combat this what we would suggest is asking your SEO company to deliver regular reports on your website’s performance for a set of targets that you set, this way you can challenge the results they are getting for you and you will soon know what type of company you are dealing with! However, be realistic in your goals and know that you are never going to be top of the search results for very competitive keywords like “toys” or “bikes”. A good SEO company will be able to target keywords that suit your company and which you have a realistic chance of doing well with.

I want to appear top of Google by next week – what can I do?

Using organic SEO, this is not going to be possible for you to achieve and do not believe anyone who tells you it is. In a situation like this when you are not willing to wait for organic SEO to take its course you should look at Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising. This is a great way to get yourself on the first page of Search Engines overnight. People are often worried about PPC because they are not aware that you can set a daily budget for the amount of money you want to spend, this means that you will not end up with a huge bill at the end of your campaign. Instead you can monitor or get an outside company such as Kent House to monitor your campaign on a weekly basis and judge how successful it is for you and make little tweaks that can have a big impact on your results.

Understanding SEO and other nasty internet marketing acronyms

Before I get started let’s deal with SEO, Search Engine Optimisation. It is easy for those of us in the know to talk about SEO, SEM, PPC, CPC, keywords and so on but are we aware that there is a whole world of people out there (some of them marketers!) who do not talk in acronyms, do not understand them and do not therefore understand us?!
As a marketer, I am always keen to ensure my message is being understood so for my first few blog entries I am going to do a basic jargon buster and SEO breakdown to help people understand the ABCs and 123s of SEO and other internet marketing abbreviations and terms. Of course I’m not going to make you an expert in a few short articles but perhaps in future it will save you from being “acronym-ed out” of high-brow marketing conversations!

The Internet Marketing Jargon Buster

SEO        Search Engine Optimisation

The act of “optimising” your website so that it appears higher in search engine results for your chosen keywords. In its most basic form, this involves working with your website to improve content, architecture, labelling and ease of navigation as well as getting some relevant inbound links to your site. It can also include the length of time your website has been in existence for, your page rank and your hosting provider. Search Engine Optimisation does not occur overnight but can take from 3 to 6 months to see any improvement – but it is well worth the effort!

PPC        Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click advertising is a fantastic way to achieve 1st page Search Engine results overnight. Things I love about PPC include the ability to set a campaign budget, set maximum cost per click values and how trackable it is! Most of the major search engines offer this service from Google’s AdWords to Yahoo!’s Search Marketing to Microsoft’s adCentre.

CPC        Cost Per Click

Cost Per Click is a PPC Advertising term and basically means the amount of money it will cost or does cost you when someone clicks on your advert. With most PPC Advertisers you can set the maximum amount of money you are prepared to spend for a click for each of your keywords (yet another reason I love PPC Advertising!).

SEM        Search Engine Marketing

This term covers both SEO and PPC and deals with any marketing activity involved with improving your position in the Search Engines. It is also worth noting that some people are only referring to PPC Campaigns when they talk about this.

Keywords

I guess I am now as guilty as everyone else, I have used this term several times already and you may not know what I’m talking about – sorry! There must be some words and phrases that you want to be found under when a searcher searches – very simply put, they are your keywords. They may include your business name, your main product and service and some other details about you such as “books – next day delivery”. Before you start optimising your site you need to come up with a list of keywords and then work your optimisation strategy around these words and phrases.

Impressions

Everyday millions of searches are done online, each time someone searches for a keyword you have included in a PPC Campaign and it is shown on the search results page that is an impression – you should not be charged in PPC for impressions just for Clicks. Impressions are also a measurement used by online publishers who sell advertising space on their site for example www.thesundaytimes.com. They will sell advertising space – banners, skyscrapers and buttons – based on the number of impressions your advert will get.

CTR    Click Through Rate(s)

Leading nicely on from impressions… Click Through Rates take the number of clicks your advert has had and express it as a percentage of the number of impressions your advert has had. CTRs can sometimes look depressingly low but it is very dependant upon what the nature of your business is and also how much competition there is in your area.

These are the basic terms used in internet marketing but I will delve deeper into each topic as 2009 progresses. If you have any questions on SEO or would like me to do an article on any particular marketing subject send me a quick email to yvonne.conway@kenthouse.com and I will be happy to oblige!

The dangers of do it yourself search engine optimisation

SEO and the DIY electrician

I’ve always thought search engine optimisation (SEO) is a bit like electrics. If you’re brave enough, willing to read up on the basics, prepared to buy some tools, and have the time to spare, you can probably do most home electrical work yourself (let’s ignore the legal requirements for certification right now as they get in the way of this slightly tortured analogy). Read more