9
Video talk on how to build powerful links to your website
The guys over at Fresh Egg have done put out a great video on how to get links for your website.
An overview of the video content is below:
Link Building
People are turning to internet marketing in the recession because:
- It’s targeted
- It’s measurable
- Great ROI (return on investment)
How?
- Google algorithm
- Relevance and importance
Relevance
- Matching pages to keywords
Importance
- Query dependant
- Links are used as votes, ones with the most links are the most important ones
- The combined authority of links that are coming to your site, how much influence and authority are those links giving your site?
- Not just links but authority links!
- Linkerati: the section of your audience that have the power and authority to link to your site, bloggers, online journalists, social media, bookmarking, tagging. Every niche has a linkerati: who are they? Why do they link? Give them something to link to?
- Power of giving away value for free. If you don’t’ share your expertise you’ll never get any links, and you’ll be invisible on the web
3 DAY PLAN – to get authority links
Day one
- Find your linkerati
- 10 sites to link to
- Google it – top blogs for your area
- Blog search – Google blog search, technerati – pick a topic relevant to your area that is time relevant
- Link diagnosis – allows you to see your site and your competitors links
Day two
- Don’t rush
- Reading, listening, understanding, absorbing
- Language they use, why they link when they link, learn from that
- Comment on the posts
- Gets you in the mind of your targets
Day 3
- Create one piece of content on your site that you are going to give away to the linkerati for free
- How to or beginners guide, something that hasn’t been done before
- Money saving tip or do it yourself guide
- To collate information that’s already out there and put it together as a resource – an authoritative resource
- If your willing to dedicate time and energy to your site you will be able to start getting your authority links
Will become more and more necessary to get these links as the market becomes more saturated
16
SEO for youtube
An article on imediaconnect about how to improve your seo on youtube. The article points out that youtube is now the second biggest search engine in use after google.
Being a video sharing website, there are some other things to consider different than thinking about a website or even a corporate video. For instance, Drew (the author) says:
“For example, if you sell construction equipment, you could produce videos of stunt drivers doing freestyle tricks in a Bobcat. Or perhaps a clothing company could create video fashion shows of embarrassing styles that were once popular. You don’t have to create traditional TV commercials to get people talking about your brand.”
When optimizing your youtube upload it is not the video itself but the text for the video that matters. Youtube builds the metatags for the page based on:
Name on video -> becomes title tag
Description (more info) -> becomes description tag
Youtube tags -> become keywords tag
Drew mentions CocaCola as a good example of video optimization http://www.youtube.com/user/cocacola
To read the full article click below
2
Updates to ecommerce website
Our company is updating stock box and packaging products website boxesdirect2u.co.uk we built the ecommerce website last year and after the shop has taken many successful orders we are planning to build the search rankings and improve the conversion rate of the website.
The site uses sagepay as the payment gateway which fits seamlessly into the website so that the customer does not have to go leave the website to pay and is reminded of the security on the website.
The websites aim is to attract both b2b and b2c customers and to build up a steady stream of repeat customers using online marketing at the heart of the strategy.
1
Google Insights for Search
I have today been playing around with the Google insights website, which lets you see the trends for keywords that you put in.
http://www.google.com/insights/search/
Here is google’s post on it http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-predictability-of-search-trends.html
One of the statements from the research is that over half of the most popular terms were found predictable in a 12 forcast. There are also more predictable categories such as health, food and drink and travel. The least pradicatble categories are for the more rapidaly changing entertainment and online communities and social networks. So I guess they cannot predict who will be the next facebook yet.
A good way to use this tool is to look at how search trends change, an example is the terms, Buy movies online and Buy DVD online which cross as people become to consume movies by different methods.
30
UK online spending overtakes TV
The news today that online advertising spending has overtaken TV advertising is no suprise to most people but it’s an interesting note that the line online advertisting spend has now been formally reconised as the most spent on media.
Most of the money is spent on google ads but it also includes display ads and email advertising. As the traditional media’s audience falls and online audienace grows the trend will continue. Google have created a platform that most small businesses and individuals can use to promote their services and products, and the instant access to unlimited amounts of people at a relitivly low cost has made the move from traditional media to online easier.
28
Ballmer Interview
Techcrunch posted an interview with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft talking about the future of Microsoft and where they are going and other things like the cloud and Twitter.
He also talks about the future of search and that he thinks the next five years will see more inovation in search. With bing starting to gain search share it should be interesting where search can go.
23
Why a keyphrase is better than a keyword
A client was asking questions today about ranking for various keywords and should they try and get their website on the search engines for specific words. I get asked this somethimes and so thought I would do a quick blog post about it, to explain my point of view.
First what are keywords and keyphrases?
Well a keyword when talked about in SEO terms means a word that you would like google or a search engine to pick up and show your website in the results for that word. For example a keyword might be website or design or web.
A keyphrase is the combination of a couple of keywords. So it may be website design or web developer. It can also be a few words long such as web designer worcester.
The main thing that any website owner should be primarily concerned with when it comes to search engines is what is your target audience going to type into the search box. It does not matter if you are number 1 in google for a never searched for phrase. Also I would say that it does not really matter to get loads of traffic to a page that visitors instantly leave or that you are not interested in.
Thinking about the search user
If for example I wanted to be found in google for any keyphrase or keyword it would not be very useful to rank highly for design, really. Someone who types that into a search engine is proberly not looking for my services, and it also puts me up against a load of other websites.
For me my ideal client would be a business searching for a web design company or web designer, and also maybe restricted by area as well. So my idea customer would be searching for web design +Worcester maybe.
22
Website is number 1
We just got a client to number 1 in google search rankings, hurry. Isn’t it great when you can get someone to the top of the most used search engine and get a hole load of traffic for the client. I cannot say who or what the keywords were so not to let the competition know but it is a good thing to get another client to the top.
17
Kanye West Disses Taylor Swift
Everyone by now has probably heard about the Kanye West / Taylor Swift VMA Award thing, where Kanye West supposedly ‘disrupted’ Taylor Swift’s speech and said that Beyonce’s Video was better. The funny thing is how many people have voiced there own opionion about it. If you search for this on you tube there are litterly thousands of people with a webcam shot video either sharing there side of the story or saying that everyone should stop talking about it, thus making even more chatter about it. It has blown up on Twitter too.
I thought this ’stunt’ was pretty rubish from MTV but now I changed my mind. If you look at the views some of these webcam videos have got I counted over 1 million views just on one. The amount of web chatter, and buzz this generated surly is beyond was even the event marketing people could have thought.
I guess its a lesson in viral marketing, but with an interesting twist, rather a video that gets shown everywhere, the content keeps getting created by the crowd, by people who have listeners and everyone jumping in on the debate. It is an interesting thought that could this be applied to other types of products. That is the challenge I am trying to take up now, can I think of things like this that grows for my clients.
And now this post has just added another comment on the stunt, so it continues to grow.
15
Using local search for search engines
Using local search optimization can be a key to most small businesses, still a lot of people never think of it when we first discuss SEO. Using local search makes sure that the people who want to find a company local to them that provide services they need can find your company.
People like not only supporting local business but also like to have contact with businesses and most often do not want to travel far to talk to a business about a service.
Sometimes it can payoff to rank high on a search engine for a local search and not worry about competing for the top place using more generic keywords. The more specific your keyword the higher chance of ranking high for it and the less cost to get a good position. I often have people contact my company who have searched for ‘West Midlands web’ or ‘west midlands web designer’ and this means that if I can rank high for these keywords then I do not have to compete with big companies who are outside of this area, so it becomes easier to rank for this.
Another tactic can be to have a website which offers services in various areas, this means that you can try to rank high for searches in different areas. I am working on a website at the moment that has different physical sites and so want local search terms for each site to take the visitor to the one that they search for.
Other things to do to help your business on the local search is to make sure that you are tagged and have a listing in google maps. Then any local directories that offer a link to your website.