What is SEO?

The world has gone SEO crazy. SEO consultants are popping up everywhere. Web design companies are re branding as SEO companies and marketing companies are offering SEO services too. This is much more than a fad though, it is common sense mixed in with a load of jargon and hype. It is the latest in marketing strategy.

What does SEO stand for?
In short, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation (the process) or Search Engine Optimisers (those who carry out the process). It does pretty much what it says on the can. They work to optimise your web presence for search engines. This is achieved by understanding the algorithms search engines use in order to index websites and display them as search results. A SEO specialist will work on your site in order to achieve good rankings for the search terms you want your business to show up under. For example, if you are a wetsuit retailer, you would like your site to come top of the list when someone searches for “wetsuits”. The value of this is obvious – increased traffic, leading to increased sales.

What does a SEO company do?
They may do a variety of things, from re coding sites and fixing problems related to the search engines ability to crawl/spider the site to changing the structure. A big part of effort goes into the content. Search engines value relevant, regularly updated content. A SEO will make sure there is relevant content, containing relevant keywords that the company wants to rank well for, and that new content is regularly added.

Why do I need a SEO?
These consultants or companies specialise in this field, and are therefore able to offer expert advise. Unfortunately many web designers are not up to date with the latest industry standards and produce websites which are not totally search engine friendly. Here an SEO can help. SEOs are also generally more aware of marketing strategy than web designers.

What are White hat and Black hat?
White hat quite simply refers to SEO techniques recommended by search engines. There is no deception. Wikipedia sums it up as “creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose”.

Black hat techniques try to game the search engines algorithms and if discovered using these techniques, your website will be penalised. There are many techniques that can be used but Google is pretty good at catching people out. This approach does not offer the long term results of White hat SEO.

Sources of confusion
As the search engines do not publish guidelines but often hint towards things there are many grey areas. The search engines algorithms are top secret. SEOs therefore have to test and make assumptions. For example, it is commonly agreed that search engines read from top to bottom and left to right. Therefore it would be beneficial to have as little as possible between the top of your source code, and your content. Mark from 45n5.com made a report on this recently.

There is no formal recognised industry body or qualification for SEO. This pretty much allows anyone to call themselves a SEO expert so when it comes to picking one to work for you it is important to do your homework. Ask for references and contact them. Any good company should have no problem supplying references. This problem is highlighted by Jeremy Schoemaker who says:
This is why SEO’s are like used car salesman…

1. They can always sell you something.
2. They can never guarantee results.
3. They can not be held accountable.
4. They have a answer for everything.
5. All the magic happens behind the curtains – they cant tell you what they are actual doing because that would be getting to much into the secret sauce.
6. Anyone can be a SEO.

SEO is an ongoing process. It is not a one off thing. In order to rank well new content has to be created regularly. This is the reason that company blogs are increasingly popular. Blogs rank very well with search engines and typically produce new content on a regular basis.

Can I do SEO?
The truth is that yes, you can quite easily do some SEO. If you designed your web site yourself and know some html you can make some changes. Start by cleaning up your code. Make sure all CSS and Javascript is linked to in a separate file. Next look at your content. Do your titles contain the keywords that relate to what you have written? Does your content contain the keywords and variations of them? Have you used ALT tags for your images? These are all things you can start to do yourself.

UPDATE: I have just found out about this free ebook showing you some easy SEO techniques. If you are ready to take the next step and find out more about SEO this is ideal.  Download  The Easy SEO Report.

Have you hired a SEO expert? What criteria did you use for selecting them? Does your business have a blog? Is it for SEO purposes?

Image is everything – Sort out your landing pages

For many people and businesses their internet presence serves one main purpose and anything else is a bonus. This one purpose is obviously to drive sales. Knowing this, why do you so often come across landing pages which are so awful they immediately put you off buying anything. Skellie describes perfectly the type of page I am talking about in her post “13 Sure Signs Your Landing Page is a Turn Off”.

In brief these points are:

1. It is one really long page
2. Almost every word starts with a capital letter
3. The text is centred for no apparent reason
4. There is barely any information about the product
5. Headings are in a plethora of bright colours
6. Huge chunks of text which are crying out for paragraphs
7. It just tries too hard
8. Huge fonts
9. Overuse of quotation marks for emphasis
10. Too many exclamation marks!!!
11. Testimonials from “John Smith” with no way of knowing who John Smith is or what he does
12. Copy just sounds like hype
13. It uses a design straight out of the 90s

Yaro Starak recently wrote a post reviewing an ebook. The post was good (as Yaro’s always are), the ebook sounded interesting so I figured I would check out the ebook’s website. It pretty much met all the criteria Skellie outlined. I scrolled down for ages and still could not see a clear “buy it now” button or a price. When I am looking at buying something, I need to know how much it costs. When I fancy something, an easy buy it now button, might make me buy it on impulse.

This type of scenario is a pet peeve of mine and something you should expect not to happen any more. Wordpress is free and there are thousands of templates available for free. It takes very little skill, and very little effort to install it and set up a modern, professional looking website. I am positive your sales will sky rocket when you have a website done properly. You can outsource the website to someone else if you are not able to create it yourself. The costs of outsourcing will probably be covered easily.

Now you have a great looking website, it is time to look at your content. Your copy should be concise, you should keep hype to a minimum and provide plenty of information about your product. Any testimonials need to be verifiable in some way. Where possible link to the person or business’ website. If your sales page is long, offer some form of navigation, let me skip straight to the features/testimonials/buy it now parts of the page. Do not make me have to hunt for these things.

Potential buyers need to know exactly how the sale process will go and what the price point is. The whole point of the exercise is to sell the product – so make it easy for someone to do that. Buy it now buttons need to be clearly visible.

The key to improving your revenue is testing different approaches to sales. There is argument that long sales pages are the most effective way of selling as Yaro pointed out. I believe that as times are changing, and more people are spending time on the web we are becoming overexposed to this type of sales pitch. For many online buyers there is a lot of anxiety involved when paying for things over the web. We need to help buyers feel more comfortable. It is similar to purchasing something from a bricks and mortar store vs a market stall. In which do you have more faith?

Separate product information using tabs for different characteristics, e.g. item description, dimensions, specifications, reviews, etc.

Do you buy things off these shady looking websites? How do people writing about making money online not appreciate the need for clean, professional looking websites?

Technology has changed how businesses start up!

There is a great article on Business Week by David E Gumpert called Your Startup on a Shoestring. Here David shows just how radically things have changed in the publishing industry. He uses the example of a health newsletter launch back in the mid 1980s. He then goes on to outline all the expenses that would be required back then in order to start and then run this business. These include huge costs for computers, printers and a mass mail campaign. The initial start up costs are not small coming in at roughly $400 000.

If you were to set up the same business today you could do it online for next to nothing. You could buy computers for next to nothing, use free open source operating systems and publishing software. Working virtually would mean no rents to pay. Domain registration is no more than a few dollars a year, and web hosting is no more than a few dollars a month. To start with, a free blogging platform such as Wordpress, (used for this blog), with a modified theme would be very low cost and effective. There is no printing cost which is a massive money saver.

Marketing would be one area which would benefit from spending some money. In fact it is where you should spend most of your money as without readers you have no business. Online advertising is nowhere near as expensive as a mass mail campaign and can be very effective in today’s world where people are spending so much time online. It is possible to target your marketing efforts more closely to those who are most likely to be interested therefore improving your return on investment. Technology such as RSS and email newsletters can keep your readers up to date and interested in your business.

This radical change has led to an increase in the number of niche publications which would never have been able to gather the readership to be viable before the web.

As mentioned the publishing industry really has changed in recent times and the risk involved with starting up can be minimised. The only catch is that the online publishing world is very competitive and you will have to work hard to stand out and build your readership. As with offline publishing, securing a loyal readership can lead to great financial rewards.

Can you think of another industry that has changed as drastically?

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