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SEO

SEO Tip: Optimize your Images for Search

by Adam Barber on May 7, 2010

When using images for your website’s content and any posts or articles you publish, it is important to make the most out of your images by optimizing them for search. This presents you with another opportunity of being found in a search engine’s image search. Below are some key points to action when adding images to your website.

  • Images for web content should ideally be in .jpg format and not be too large in size. The smaller the file size the better.
  • Descibe what the image is in its filename, rather than leave it as random letters and numbers. For example, do not leave the filename as jjj3794.jpg or whatever the sequence may be, instead, create a filename that describes the image.
  • Seperate each word in the filename with a hyphen e.g describe-what-the-image-is.jpg
  • Depending on the keywords you are tageting for the website page, post or article, use relevant and related keywords when naming your image and describing it in its alt text. Also, remember to be descriptive and not just list your keywords.

Following these points will further help optimize your website and allow your image content to be found in search engines. Also, it doesn’t take long to implement these as you go and is a worthwhile SEO habit to develop.

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£20,000 Generated from 30 Minutes Per Day Online Marketing

by lee on April 13, 2010

During the span of my online career so far, I have often heard things like…

How long will it be before I get visits & sales on my new website?… Lee, tell me the things you have learnt over 10 years so I can quit my day job… etc.

Harsh Reality: There is no one size fits all answer and it will take time and consistent effort.

Also, I often hear website owners say… I have not got time to do this everyday, tell me something I can do every month or so.

Harsh Reality: It does not work like that, you need to be consistent, daily if possible.

Cheery Reality: It does not have to take over your whole life. 30 mins to an hour per day can really be effective

Truthfully, there is no definitive answer to any of these questions, it depends on how much time you have and what you are trying to achieve not to mention numerous other factors. Also, it depends on you knowing what you are doing to start with.

That is one of the reasons we provide our clients with training and we are currently creating the Online Marketing Tuition product via Affordable Websites Now.

All of our websites are search engine friendly, but that is not enough on its own. Success online requires carrying out a well executed plan on a consistent basis, focusing on the requirements of your target audience or customer base.

Shameless plug here – If you are thinking of having a wordpress based website built or possibly a redesign of your current site, you should consider our service. At the moment, our online marketing tuition is being offered for free to our clients as we are still developing the syllabus, but eventually, we will be selling this course as a home study pack.

So, to back up what I am saying about consistent activity, here is an interesting view from one of our website stats. In the interest of privacy, the domain will remain anonymous.

The graphic shows how only 30 mins (approx) per day, consistently working a strategic online marketing plan can make a huge difference. Ignore the spike, this high exposure marketing did not impact much on revenue, just visits. The important bit is that the traffic has slowly grown from 0 to over 100 unique visits daily in less than 12 months. Now 100 visits per day may not blow you away, but, these are targeted visitors who are generating a growing revenue for the business owner. Recently, sales exceeded £20,000 within the first 12 months.

This is the right way to do online marketing…

Consistently & steadily to a predifined plan. There are no short cuts. If anyone tells me differently, I don’t believe them, but I am happy for them to try and convince me :)

Click the graphic to study this example of good, consistent online marketing.

traffic

In comparison, here is one of my sites that I have neglected. This is the stats of a failing website. I know what to do about it, but need to do it consistently for it to be effective. If your stats resemble this, you need to make some changes.

traffic-bad

Please feel free to contact us about our SEO services or to get your name down to be notified about the launch date of our Online Marketing Tuition course.

Also, if you wish to share any of your own experiences with online marketing, feel free to leave a comment.

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10 Easy Tips for Effective SEO

by Adam Barber on February 1, 2010

SEOHere are ten search engine optimisation (SEO) tips to help improve your website’s search engine ranking. These are strategies that you should be able to implement easily without an in-depth knowledge of SEO.

  1. Find keywords that best describe your services or products, keeping in mind that there is no point optimising your website for keyword phrases that people don’t search for. A great free tool that will help with your keyword research is Google Keyword Tool
  2. Add good relevant content on a regular basis. Search engines will keep coming back for more if you keep feeding them unique and fresh content.
  3. Include your keyword phrase sparingly throughout your content. Don’t overdo it though! If it doesn’t read naturally because you have mentioned your keyword phrase too much, then search engines will treat it with no relevance. Take the time to write well-written content with the reader in mind.
  4. Make sure you use your keyword phrase in your Title tag. This will vary throughout your website as each page will have its own keyword phrase you want to rank for.
  5. Use the meta description effectively, including related keywords, but not overdoing it. This is often pulled through as the copy in your search engine listing and can help attract searchers to click on your website.
  6. Use text links within your page content and navigational menu. This will allow search engine spiders to find other pages on your site and indicate what the page is about.
  7. Build a network of backlinks to your website. Link back from quality sites related to your industry.
  8. Remember to use descriptive keyword phrases when creating external and internal links to your site. For example, if the page you are linking to is about ‘blue widgets’ then link with the text ‘blue widgets’. This is much better than just linking with ‘Click here’.
  9. Use relevant and descriptive text in your image ALT attributes. Search engines will see this as relevant text when indexing your site.
  10. Add social networking and bookmarking capabilities to your website or blog i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon. If you have good content that is worth talking about, this will encourage visitors to share your content.
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7 Quick Tips to Building a Search Engine Friendly Website

by Adam Barber on November 26, 2009

Building search engine friendly websiteIt is important for your search engine presence to build a website that is search engine friendly from the very start. Here is a list of 7 tips to help you gauge whether your site is search-engine friendly.

1. Research Your Keywords
Research the keywords that people type in a search engine when looking for the services or products you offer. This may not always be what you think so it is important to invest time into doing this or hire a professional to do your keyword research for you.

2. Don’t build an entirely Flash based website.
Although, it may look great, search engines can not index it properly. If you do use Flash, remember to also write text to accompany the Flash elements. The same goes for images, include them by all means, but make sure you name the image file describing what it is and include “alt” text that also describes exactly what the image is i.e. <img src=”…/name-of-image.jpg” alt=”text describing the image”>

3. Use the <Title> Tag to describe what the content of the page is about
The <Title> tag is HTML that displays the title of the page in the very top bar of the browser. It tells search engines exactly what your website / page is about. Use the keyword(s) you wish to rank for in the <Title> tag, as long as it is relevant to the page content.

4. Include your keywords in your content
Repeat the keywords you want to rank for several times in the first few lines of your page, but making sure it makes sense and reads naturally. Use your keyword(s) often throughout the rest of the page, but don’t overdo it.

5. Link your web pages using text links
Link to and from the internal pages of your website. If a piece of content you write is relevant to another blog post, link to it from within the body of your content, not just from the nav menu, footer or sidebar.

6. Make sure you have clean URLs
By this, I mean that they should not contain dynamically created characters. For example http://www.webcentric360.com/?id=386 is not ideal as search engines don’t read past characters like ?, & and =. Your URLs should tell you what the page is about such as  http://www.webcentric360.com/7-quick-tips-building-search-engine-friendly-website/

7. Create regular new content
Search engines like fresh and original content so create new content on a daily basis, or at least weekly. Blogging is a great way of publishing regular content and in this day and age, I think that every website should have a blog.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but gives you a good basis on which to start building a search engine friendly website that will gradually move up in search engine rankings.

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The Importance of Keyword Research

by Adam Barber on November 13, 2009

Do Your Homework with Keywords ResearchOne of the most important elements of getting targeted visitor traffic to your website is keywords research. Without it, you will be losing traffic to your competitors and wasting the earning potential of your business website.

If your business depends primarily on the Internet, then effective keyword research is imperative to the success of your online business.

If you have a good understanding of keywords and keyword research, there are several free and paid keyword search tools and keyword research software to help you. I have listed a few of each below.

Free Keyword Tools

Google Keyword Research tool
Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion tool
Google Insights for Search

Paid Keyword Tools

Keyword Elite
SEM Rush
Wordtracker

The free keyword search tools are ideal for those on a budget and the paid options can save you time and provide more in depth statistics.

By doing your keyword research or hiring a company to do it for you, your website and business will benefit from: -

  • Highly targeted search traffic
  • An increased number of visitors
  • Increased sales & revenue

Also, when starting out, it is a good idea to begin targeting those keywords and phrases that haven’t got as much competition in your marketplace. You can then build up to the highly competitive keyword search phrases over time.

Affordable Website Now offer Keyword Research Services for those who may not have the time, resources or know-how to carry out keyword research for their website.

Additionally, if you already have a website with us, provide tips and training in the area of keyword research and search engine optimization and marketing in general.

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