Studies have shown where people look when they are searching for things.

I mean, where they look and where their eyes are drawn to.

The heat map above shows the importance of being in the natural search engine rankings and the importance of  SEO.

And take a look at the adwords down the right hand side. If you’re not in the top 2 or 3 then you’re not in the game.

If ever there was a case for you to take SEO very seriously then this is it!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant

Should You Play the SEO Game?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) plays a vital role in the success of any website. The more SEO tactics you use when creating your site, the better your chances of experiencing higher levels of traffic generated from the search engines themselves. Devising a good SEO strategy can take quite a bit of work, but is it really necessary?

I’ve found that while SEO is important for some projects, it may not be as important or effective for everything you work on. Before you embark on your SEO journey, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is my project short-term or long-term?

2. Am I creating a simple one-page website with sales copy or am I creating a multi-page website that I am     going to update on a regular basis.  

3. How much time do I have to put into this project daily?

These are questions you should ask yourself before beginning any project. The reason is simple. If you don’t have enough time to put into devising an SEO strategy and marketing your website, you really need to reconsider whether or not you want to put up a website at all. Consider whether or not you honestly believe your venture will be successful.

There are hundreds of Internet marketers who love throwing up one-page sales sites and then promoting them until they can’t promote them anymore. They’ve found a popular niche that may not be hot for a very long time, so they want to get as much out of the product they’re trying to sell as they can. If you’re in this type of situation, SEO may not be top priority. You should certainly consider SEO techniques as you create your sales copy, but issues such as backlinks and search engine traffic may not be as important to you. In your case, a pay per click advertising campaign is going to drive traffic to your website quickly and help you to make sales.

On the other hand, you may be launching a long-term project. Perhaps you’re starting an informational website or blog into which you will later weave some money-making campaigns or products. Long term traffic goals are important, so SEO tactics should be carefully considered every step of the way so that you are constantly building up your traffic volume with both repeat and new visitors daily.

While it’s not always necessary to play the SEO game, it’s always important to keep SEO techniques in mind. You may not have a long-term vision for your website, but even a little bit of search engine traffic will help boost your popularity.

Happy Marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant - Internet Marketing Consultant - Sales Expert

SEO SOS – Top Tips for High Rankings

SEO, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimisation, has recently become an incredibly hot topic amongst internet entrepreneurs. Effective search engine optimisation means higher ranking amongst websites in similar niches, making your page more visible during everyday web searches. The higher your page ranking, the more likely it is you’ll experience an increase in search engine traffic to your website or page.

There are a number of things you can do to optimise your pages for the search engines. Here are a few of my personal favorites.

Start with an effective domain name and heading. Including niche keywords within your actual domain name will increase your likelihood of being indexed within the search engines for that particular keyword. If you like bird watching, for example, you might want to purchase a domain name such as www.birdwatching.com or a variation, such as www.birdwatching-experts.com. The keyword “bird watching” is in both names and increases your chances of being seen.

Use headings and subheadings within the text of your web page. The headings and subheadings should include keywords and phrases relating to your niche. You should also use a H1 or H2 heading tag (or any H# tag up to 6) to make your headlines stand out. Search engines look for headline tags with strong keywords, so finding a way to include a headline tag within your content is essential.

Add descriptions to the images you use on your website. It’s one thing to place a breathtaking image on your website or sales page, but you have to make sure they are SEO compatible as well. When you add an image you’ll have the opportunity to add what is known as an ALT tag. The ALT tag is simply a description of the image, but when you write this description you’ll want to be descriptive and use at least one variation on your niche keyword.

Every website needs a sitemap page. A sitemap page is a website page that lists links to all of the different pages contained within your website. Sitemap pages make it easy for Google and other search engines to find and index all of your pages because you’ve linked them in one convenient place.

Create internal links. Each page on your website should have links to some of the other pages contained within your site. One or two should do the trick, but will help increase clicks to other pages, which will in turn increase your search engine popularity.

Search Engine Optimisation can be tricky at first, but once you get the hang of writing content that is SEO optimised, you’ll have a difficult time reverting back to your old style of content creation. I find that SEO optimisation is absolutely paramount if you’re hoping to use the search engines to gain traffic for your website. The above list is not complete, but provides a great starting foundation.

What are some of your favourite SEO optimisation tips?

Happy Marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant - Internet Marketing Consultant - Sales Expert

Search Engine Optimisation Tips

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is commonly referred to as an art in, and of itself. It’s simply not possible to create a website, submit it to a series of search engines, and then sit back and wait for the traffic to come rolling in. A good webmaster will form a clear plan of action for making sure that his website earns the highest page rankings possible which, combined with a few other marketing strategies, will ensure him as much web traffic as possible.

We’ve already discussed a few of the things you can do to help with the search engine optimisation of your site. Today I’d like to share a few more tips that, when incorporated, should help a great deal when it comes to increasing your page ranking.

Don’t neglect your website’s TITLE tag. The TITLE tag is something that not many of us think of when creating a website or blog. The little blue box at the top of the screen appears to be more a part of the search engine browser than as a part of our website, but it is incredibly important to have a title in the box that draws the attention of the search engines. Try to be creative and devise a different title for every page of your website – and don’t forget to incorporate your keywords into the titles, too!

Avoid flash images and frames. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s ok. If you do know how to add flash images and frames to your website, I highly recommend avoiding this. These types of coding are new and most search engines do not know how to read them. The search engines won’t understand the tags they find and this can ultimately end up with your page not being indexed at all.

Find a good website submission program. Some search engines will automatically seek out and index your website pages while others will take longer because they require actual human review. In some cases, your website will be declined the first time around, but it is more likely than not that it will be accepted and indexed the second time around. Some search engines require waiting periods for new sites to become indexed, so be sure to plan ahead if you’re working on a project that needs to be successfully optimised by a certain time of year.

Regularly maintain your website. If you have HTML errors on your pages, and a search engine should happen to come across one while indexing, it is possible for your website to be removed from the search engine index. If that happens, you’ll have to wait for their next web crawl to be re-indexed and there is no way of knowing when that will be. Regularly check your website for errors within the pages to avoid problems with the search engines.

While some of these tips may sound complicated, it really only takes a little bit of experimentation, trial, and error to get a firm grasp on what needs to be done. I regularly incorporate each of these into my projects and find that they do quite a bit to increase traffic. Good luck!

Happy Marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Marketing Consultant - Internet Marketing Consultant - Sales Expert