Every time you search, Google is trying to sort through billions of web pages in less than a second to deliver THE best page it possibly can. Two elements that it uses to decide who’s is top for a certain phrase are:

1. Content on your website
2. How other people see your website with links.

So, how do you get to the top for your key phrases? Firstly, you need to make sure your pages say what you do… and secondly you need to assess what incoming links you can get (deserve) and how.

One way to see how other people do this is through competitive research. This little video shows you some simple ways to look at other peoples successful websites.

Reference Links

• Firefox - web browser of choice
• SEO for Firefox - cool plug in for easy viewing of competitive search data

Having appropriate links to your website can only be a good thing… or can it?

The idea is that the more relevant links you have coming into your website the more authority you have.

About five years ago, the main strategy for building links was for webmasters to swap links (reciprocal linking) . I wasn’t doing it myself but I got the odd e-mail to some of my sites along the lines of, “If I link to you, will you link to me?” So, you ended up with lots of websites with ‘links’ pages. The problem is that so many of these ‘reciprocal’ links simply weren’t relevant.

Of course, search engines rely on giving good results so their criteria for who they place at the top of their search engines, as their algorithms have improved, has become more focussed around the basics - quality and relevance.

They still put a lot of emphasis on incoming links, as well as out going links, but the quality of the sites you are connected to can also help or damage your own reputation.

And, arguably, it doesn’t stop there, with the search engines creating the connections once, twice, or more times removed, ie. the site that’s linking to the site that’s linking to you, could affect your ranking.

For instance, if you have a reference article from an industry magazine website this could be good, depending on the anchor text and general content of the site. Compare this to a link from a spammy website (with low page ranking) about something off-topic.

No following

Some websites have got around this, in terms of their external linking, by using a tag called No follow (looks like this). It tells a search engine not to take the link juice with it when it follows the link, hence, not adding weight to the target page.

This stops people trying to abuse links.

Laws of attraction

With the advent of user generation through blogging and social networking, a more effective link building strategy now in my opinion is in content generation, with the added bonus that the search engines love new fresh content.

Here, we are talking Blogging, article writing and any aspect of your website, including tools and games, that ‘attract’ people - both physcially, in terms of visitors, and arguably more importantly, through links.

The one key important thing to remember is your website goals and traffic funnel.

If you promote your business through a website, the chances are that your content is quite commercial. Yes, you may have some reference articles on there, but these will always have the stigma (for want of a better word) that there is a commercial enterprise right behind it.

This takes away some of the value of your good content, in terms of potential incoming links from external sources.

A way to add a layer of separation to this process is by creating an independent, non-sales oriented website, full of quality, non-biased content that has a chance of growing credibility.

If you add in some discreet, non-biased links to your commercial website, you can also benefit from the link “juice”, ie. the fact that a respectable, linked-to website, is linking to your website. eg. Jessica Nails for TS Beauty (arguably a weak website but does get regular traffic that pushes through).

There are other ways of creating the same sort of effect, without the need for a complete website, namely websites such as Squidoo (Jessica Nails) and Hub Pages (Building better web pages).

Effectively the aim is to attract credibility. It is extra work that will probably not lead to a direct kick-back, but these tactics, if applied regularly, will benefit a medium to long term online marketing strategy.

I always think about the “gold rush” when I think of web marketing and client expectations.

As soon as the word is out that gold is being made there is a big rush, despite the fact that the main bulk of the gold has already been taken… it doesn’t stop that rush of anticipation.

And so, expectations of return from web marketing also tend to be equally unrealistic. Why? Because most of the big profits are made at the beginning when there is little competition and lots of opportunity.

But they did it…

The initial gold rush is what gets the press attention, showing what is possible, setting the average Joe’s expectation to an opportunity that has already passed.

Google Adwords is becoming saturated, E-Mail marketing doesn’t deliver the results it used to. Unfortunately, this is what people are looking to for their web marketing now but not getting the expected results.

Try a Different Commodity

Some online marketing and advertising, such as pay-per-click, is very tangible: You paid ‘X’ and you got ‘Y’.

But, the measurement is usually focussed on the wrong thing - mainly visitors, rather than an actual tangible result, ie. sales leads. Costs are becoming higher and higher - the gold is getting scarcer.

My belief is that there is one clear-cut way of creating long-term, sustainable web traffic that adds value to your business… and that, is quality content.

• Content-rich sales pages with customer benefits
• White papers, articles, industry commentary
• News and views, regularly updated
• Useful, relevant tools (budget permitting)

It won’t deliver immediate traffic, but, if you continue to build it, they will come… and natural listings of your quality content, after the initial investment, is free.

After finding myself explaining this concept quite a lot recently, I decided to put it into words and post it on The Escape Blog - The Website Traffic Funnel. Worth reading, if I do say so myself.

I am trying to build a list of marketing companies in my area for possible partnerships and am amazed at how unfindable some companies are on the web.

First I used Google, but was bombarded with online marketing companies, not geographically localised, so I headed to Yell - which has been surprising useful. Then, using Credit Safe (to make sure they were a correct match financially) I headed back to Google to find the exact company name, even using the post code and/or address.

Man, I can’t believe how many of them didn;t come up in the listings. What chance have their customers got?

So, if you have the same problem… try this on your website (replace the bold bits):

Create a Title Tag

On your contact page create a bespoke title tag with your full company name (or the name you are known by). In your HTML between the <head> tag and </head> tag add the following:

<title>company name - town</title>

Create a Meta Description

Again, on the same page, between the same tags, create the description:

<meta name=”description” content=”Contact details for your company, a what you do in town, county” />

Create a Heading

You could also make sure the heading of your page (the main title that people see), which is usually the first bit oif text after the <body> tag, is tagged up using <h1>Contact Details For Your Company</h1>

Signposts Drive Traffic

Remember, you are not just helping yourself, you are helping the people actually trying to find you!

By the way, if you are based locally to Basingstoke, in Hampshire, Surrey or Berkshire and you are a marketing agency or a PR agency looking to hook up with a digital design agency with online marketing skills, why not contact me.

Through a meeting with a prospect last week, I was sent a PDF with some SEO charges of a competitor - Blimey!

In our work at The Escape, I am NOT happy unless a website we built has been made search engine friendly as a matter of course - correct tagging of pages (meta title, H1 heading and meta description). I would feel like I haven’t done my job fully. Not all clients get or appreciate this but I have my own standards.
But, to see that some companies charge for this - £35 per page! That’s based on you supplying the info. It’s an extra £150 per page for the research. So, if you had a ten page website with half the pages needing optimisation, that’s £925. Plus £125 to submit XML site map to Google.

Like I said, at The Escape, we do this as a matter of course and, it doesn’t mean I am right. Over-delivery on web projects is something I am currently happy to do, especially for people who recognise this but maybe this is where additional revenue can be made?

It is hard to justify the added value of search engine optimisation because there are no guarantees making it quite a hard sell and, at the end of the day, that value is only realised if results come. Client mindset still says the results are based on visitors, rather than my view - defined call-to-actions.

That’s why I get confused on the issue I guess and, based a few meetings I have had recently, so are clients.

Gee’d On By John Chow, I’ve bought a couple of pages on Million Dollar Wiki.

The logic’s there in terms of short term exposure for a couple of high-end words (I’ve bought “beauty” for TS Beauty and “candles” for a new project) and also longer term link building potential.

I’ll link in the pages and give you an update in due course…

Less than 1% of press releases issued online contained a link (via Drew McLellan).

Traditionally, getting the word out for PR people was enough but with the concept of linking, there’s more value to be gained.

It’s not just about the potential that someone may actually “click through” to your site, but in the eyes of the search engines, the very fact that the link is there in the first place could be of benefit. I say “could” because it all depends on the site that’s linking to you.

One way of seeing who Google sees linking to you (works with Yahoo too) is by typing in the following into the search field:

• link:(yourwebsite.co.uk) -site(yourwebsite.co.uk)
• eg. link: blog.craigkillick.co.uk -site:www.craigkillick.co.uk
  (looks like this)

This basically says, find all the sites that link to my website but don;t include the links that come from my website.

Note: My blog is a week old so there isn’t much to shout about.

Clients often tell me that SEO (search engine optimisation) isn’t required on their website because they aren’t interested in search traffic.

And, because so many small businesses ignore SEO, they can’t be found through search engines at all, even if your type their company name into a search engine.

Not only does this not make sense (for the sake of some simple tagging), an unethical competitor could be optimising a web page specifically to take search traffic away from you by utilising your company name against you. I’ve seen it with keywords in the old days and I am seeing it now with pay per click advertising - keywords are easy to use and invisible to the general web user.

But, as search engines move away from the keywords meta tag in natural listings, how optimised is your website, even for your own company name, location or what you do?

When someone actually wants to find you in a search engine - will they even get close? I had it last week trying to find a company in a certain town. It took me about 20 minutes to find them finally through an obscure directory, which listed an contact e-mail that I had to copy and paste the domain name from.

Three Simple Rules For Being Found

1. Make sure your title tag is set up to include your company name, what you do and location (if important). Nothing too long - stick to the main facts:
   eg. Craig Killick - Website Marketing Consultant in Hampshire
2. Create a meta description tag as a paragraph that introduces your company:
   eg. A Web Site Marketing Consultant based in Basingstoke, Hampshire, Craig offers website strategy advice that delivers business results.
3. Make sure your page has a relevant title, wrapped up in an H1 title tag:
   craig killick [ website marketing consultant ]

Mistakes People Make

Many people go overboard, trying to get as many words in as possible. Keep it simple and relevant. Remember, when someone does a search (1) and (2) are what show up in the Google search results. So many results look messy because they are stuffed with so many words.

Search engine optimisation is one thing but it’s still a human being doing the search. Make your links informative and relevant, but also make them attractive (advertorial style) so if they do come up in the search results, someone will want to click on your link.