SEO Blog

List of UK Article Directories

18 / 03 / 2010 by admin

When it comes to promoting your business in UK, you may consider article directories as the place to start with. Article directories become one of the easiest and economic ways to advertise, whether you promoting your business, product or your website.

There are thousands of article directories all over the internet, but if your business is in UK you should be looking for those in UK, as you will need few high-quality inbound links from other UK sites. For that purpose, I’ve put together a list of UK Article Directories that we use.

Great Free Link for Your Web Site

05 / 03 / 2010 by admin

If you are new to search engine optimization it can seem a bit daunting in the beginning. Once you get started and learn how to build links on your own you will have loads of idea – many of which you will find are already being used – that’s life.

Here is a great link for any site. aboutus.com – go here and add your site details. Getting the search engines to find your site then index it is your first priority. A link from this web site is a good link, Google and the rest spider here quite often, also it is a good link in Google’s eyes – as it lists fairly high up on the list of links.

Play around at aboutus.org, add contact details if you want, add more information about your site, make it good, it is worth the 30 minutes you will spend doing a little typing.

The Best Links To Get

01 / 03 / 2010 by admin

Thinking about the links, links are very important. As we have said before, it is the one main thing that gets sites up the search results.

Lets take a closer look at one ov the web site. Fruit Smoothie Recipes will serve as a good example here for link building. As you will see the link is part of a sentence, near the top of the article, and has the key words that we want this website to be found for.

These are the hardest links to get and the ones that are treated in the highest regard by search engines. Having a link like this http://www.fruitsmoothierecipes.me.uk is okay, but just okay. Having the self same link in a list of other links on a page full of them does not help a lot – but it is always better than not having it at all.

Therefore submitting to directories that do not list keywords as anchor text is not great and often time can be better spent getting links that really help.
So bear all this in mind when writing your blog – always have at least one link from your blog everytime you write to your company web site.

Is Your Web Site Indexed?

25 / 02 / 2010 by admin

Before starting search marketing for your web site it is wise to check if you site is already indexed in any of the main search engines. Type – site:yourdomain.com – this will list all the pages from your site that are currently indexed. The same works for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

If you find that your site is not indexed then you need some links for the search engines to find you. Many new web designers when they are first starting out will go to the search engines and submit their site directly to the search engine and then wait… Don’t bother, there are quicker and easier ways to get the spiders to find you.

If your site is indexed then you have passed the first post.

Getting your first links to your site may seem daunting. Where do you start, how do I ask people I don’t know for links? I don’t know anyone else that has a web site, etc. Don’t worry, there are easy ways to deal with the first links.

Search engines, like Google, visit blogs almost every day if they are written on a regular basis. That is where to start. If you already read a few blogs about your own industry, leave a comment with your name and your web site were it is asked for; remember though try and contribute to the subject, just saying “Great post thanks” is not a great contribution, if it is in your area and you know something worth saying then say it. Work at it till you have something worth saying. NEVER type your web site into the comments field, that is spam and will be considered as such by almost all bloggers.

One last point here, make sure the search engines can find your site and read your navigation. Search engines don’t like websites that are completely written in Flash, so re-consider. Are you using Javascript for navigation, if so get a site map up in plain HTML. Stay away from frames, just makes the job harder, sometimes impossible. Don’t make the job of getting up the rankings harder than it is already.

SEM versus SEO

20 / 02 / 2010 by admin

So what do you want to do? Search Engine Marketing or Search Engine Optimization? Firstly, the difference between the two should be established. The differences are not great, SEO is part of or can be part of SEM.

Search engine optimization is purely targeted at search engines, it is a method to gain organic long term growth and visitors. On page SEO targets areas such as page layout (coding), meta tags, keywords, title tag, amount of code on page v’s the amount of text on the page, great original content and enough of it on each page, internal link structure, good relevant headings (using H tags and again keywords in the headings), and alt tags.

This is all on page Search engine optimization it all helps and is helpful to getting good rankings in the search engine results page (SERP). These are tasks that are withn your control and control them you should, there is no point in missing the obvious.

Off page SEO is harder to control. Getting links and relevant links is the way forward. Any links from most any pages will do to start with, as times goes on and your pages are indexed by Google it is time to narrow that to what will help in the long term. That is relevant links. Relevant links have two essential components. Link text or anchor text, I want link text that lead to my site to say “Dublin Web Design” or “Web Design Dublin” some of these words can be changed to Designer or Ireland instead of Dublin, but you get the general idea. Why? This is the most important area of all search engine optimization, because this currently is the most important item on the Google algorithm – it is that simple. You might think it is not fair, you have great content, but without those links very few people are going to see that you have this great content.

If number one on the Google algorithm is link text, then the number two is relevance. This term is a bit more fuzzy than link text. Relevant can be all over the board. However a good way of seeing it is if the page you want the link from returns for the search items you want listed for. Let me explain this a bit more. I want to be listed for “web design dublin” therefore getting a link from any page on the internet that is indexed for web design will do nicely. A quick search reveals that there are 1,110,000,000 pages in the Google index for that search term. This is were my main relevant links are hiding. But remember that is only one key search term I want listing for. You, as I do, will want to list for many different keywords. Sometimes targeting keywords that are not so highly fought over can produce just as good results quicker and for longer, this is known as the long tail.

This outlines search engine optimization. Search engine marketing CAN include SEO, however it does not have to. Search engine marketing is as it says – marketing. Good SEM should include as least some element of SEO, for example – all on page SEO. SEM includes, Pay Per Click (PPC) using the likes of Google adwords, Yahoo! and MSN also have similar services. It is a way to easily control a marketing budget and ones that is very flexible and can be changed at a minutes notice. Link buying falls into the SEM arena from companies like Text Link ads. Buying banner adverts on other sites at cost per thousand displays, paying blogs to review your site at review me, SEM is often paid for and, though it does not have to be, it is often short term and usually used in conjunction with SEO campaigns to get the short term results that a company or client requires.

SEO for FireFox

15 / 02 / 2010 by admin

This is my most used tool when searching. First go to Aaron Walls site and download SEO for FireFox. Once downloaded install and restart FireFox.

On the bottom right hand corner of your browser there will now be a SEO logo – it is greyed out when off, toggle with the mouse and it will become coloured and on. Do not do all your searches with this on, if you have a fast internet connection Google will treat it like automatic queries after a while and ban your IP address from Google for somewhere between 30 minutes and four hours – therefore if you are using this on a server at work the whole system could be kicked out of Google search for a while.

The default for SEO for FireFox is off, therefore without editing the settings it will not work. Follow the instruction on Aaron’s page and or the tool itself.

Once setup, run a search query; you will now see below each result more information. There are only a few pieces of the huge amount of information that I want to know immediately about a website. The age is right at the start, this is important for getting links from and if I want to get in front of them in the search results, generally the older the site the harder it is to beat and the better it is to get a link from.
The first Yahoo! links number is the inbound links to the whole site and the second Yahoo! Number is the inbound links to that page. The .edu is the education links. Switch off FireFox before opening any of these to see the actual links. You have to open the Yahoo! Page to see the links as the figures given are the total number of links and it often falls dramatically when you open Yahoo! and see that many of the links are coming from the one website – good for Page Rank flow and indexing, but it makes little difference for search results.

The last item on this menu is the whois link. I use this when I cannot find contact details on the website; more often the whois details will have contact information. If there is no whois contact and no contact on the site then it is time to move on quickly.

By no means does this tool give an in-depth guide to the search results, but it can give a very quick feel for the area, and often helps to make my mind up quickly on whether to compete in the area.

Irish SEO Tool Add on For FireFox

10 / 02 / 2010 by admin

Everyone who works in online marketing or is developing their own web site will have various SEO and FireFox add on’s and software tools that they use. For the next while I am going to list some of my favorite and sometimes not so favorite tools.

RedFly Marketing are one of the few Irish companies that have developed a FireFox plugin. I use it simply because it is easier to use than entering the text details myself. (&gl=country code – at the end of the search string).

Their FireFox plugin allows you to easily see the search results in other geographic locations. If you are in Ireland and search using Google, as most people do, then you will be getting results that are influenced by the Irish index. If you can think of Google as huge databases it will help. They have a database for just Irish results so you can click on “pages from Ireland” and this will give you only pages from Ireland.

If you use Google.com in Ireland the results are influenced by your geographic location, therefore the website at the top in Google.com in Ireland is often not the same website that is at the top if the same search is done in the UK or the US for example.

If you are only competing in Ireland and have no care what happens to your website outside of Ireland this may be of no interest to you, however if you sell online this is unlikely to be the case. For example if you search for “B&B Kerry” the same website is at no1 in the US, UK, and Ireland – however the no 2 and beyond change – this information I am sure is very important to the website that is no1, and for the rest who are trying to get that spot.

This plugin is easy to use, just go to the RedFly site and download and install using FireFox. You will be prompted to restart FireFox, do so. Once installed you only have to right click on the screen and go to “Search Google Global” and chose the geographical location to see the different search results.

So the next time your search engine optimisation team tell you just to do a search on Google.com – well they might just have a surprise.

How To Choose a Web Designer

03 / 02 / 2010 by admin

The web design industry is experiencing a growth rate of huge proportions, due partly to the numerous companies that have appeared as a result of continued Internet expansion. The business world’s appetite for websites and ecommerce solutions show no signs of abating in the near future, and organisations and individuals who want to commission the services of a web design company are faced with a dizzying choice of options.

Companies will rightly advertise their creative skills, technical expertise and design know-how. They will use lots of technical terms and buzzwords in their marketing literature, but because of the sheer number of companies all offering more or less the same services, the point is reached where all the advertising can begin to look almost identical.

How then does one go about choosing a competent design company from the many available? If you are new to the workings of the Internet, then the most obvious and perhaps safest method is via personal recommendation, which by its very nature is a vote of confidence from a satisfied customer and presents a golden opportunity for an organisation to excel itself; after all, there is nothing like a referral to start the ego twitching and make a company go all out to impress.

An alternative method to a referral is of course to look on the Internet itself. You will find literally thousands of web designers advertising their services and at the same time providing visual proof of their abilities via their own websites. It is always a good idea to look at portfolio and testimonial pages; you can then contact one or two of their customers to get verbal references; these may help you in deciding which design company is best for you.

Another option is to choose a company at random and talk to them about what you expect from your intended website. Good designers will listen to what you have to say and work with you; they will gather as much information as possible from a customer before going anywhere near a computer. Moreover, they will always be willing to offer sound advice and will develop solutions to help bring your ideas to life.

In addition, and perhaps the smallest sector of the web design industry are the self-taught individuals who whilst having no formal training or qualifications, do possess a natural talent, aptitude and enthusiasm for web design, and who for the most part produce extremely high-quality work often at a fraction of the cost charged by the larger companies.

It is worth mentioning that there are so many capable and talented designers available, that the hardest part of getting your website built will probably be deciding which company or individual you want to do it. Taking the time to look into all the options should help to ensure that whomever you chose will produce the required result.

Web Pages That Sucks

24 / 01 / 2010 by admin

Don’t know where to start on the design of your web site? Well here is an idea, Web Pages that Suck. This site intends to give some advice on design issues by highlighting the bad and ugly and lack of usability around the web. It has also an interesting questionnaire where you can see if your web site sucks – interesting especially if you have not designed the site yourself. This site is worth a browse for ten minutes at least, it might just give you some insight.

Free Web Software

18 / 01 / 2010 by admin

There are a few good programs for creating your own web site if you do not know HTML very well. FrontPage and Dreamweaver are the two most used. However they are not cheap, I doubt the value of them, especially FrontPage, for beginners or for client to use to update their own site.

There is a great FREE page creation software available from Nvu you can download it from this link.

If you are just starting out building your own website or need an easy cheap way to update things like addresses or telephone numbers this is the way to go.

Nvu is open source great also for developers who want to tweak the code. The program can be used on Windows, Mac, or Linux – so no messing with operating systems. The program is a WYSIWYG – makes layout easy for beginners.

* WYSIWYG editing of pages, making web creation as easy as typing a letter with your word processor.
* Integrated file management via FTP. Simply login to your web site and navigate through your files, editing web pages on the fly, directly from your site.
* Reliable HTML code creation that will work with all of today’s most popular browsers.
* Jump between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML using tabs.
* Tabbed editing to make working on multiple pages a snap.
* Powerful support for forms, tables, and templates.
* The easiest-to-use, most powerful Web Authoring System available for Desktop Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh users.

This is the highlights from their front page – have a look well worth it for beginners or those just wanting free web creation software.

Rubriky