Search Engine Optimisation Tutorial - SEO Local Search

Welcome to Part 2/3 of the Search Engine Optimisation Tutorial - SEO Local Search. Part 1 detailed the research you need to undertake to be able to optimise your website for local search e.g. for the phrase “car valeting west midlands”.

Below i will show you how to use the research carried out in part 1 and implement this into your website to ensure your website is optimised for local search.

1a Firstly sign up to Google Analytics
- Click the link to find out How to sign up and install Google Analytics?

1b Sign up to Google Webmaster Tools
- Click the link to find out How to sign up to and configure Google Webmaster Tools?

1c Finally sign up to Live Search Webmaster Center.

These steps will ensure you can track all your visitor movements whilst on your site (Google Analytics) and will also aid you in the process of managing your website from the back end (Google Webmaster Tools)

2. As soon as Google Analytics has been successfully installed its probably best to let it run for a few weeks to allow the search engines to index your website and find you’re website content. Checking this on a daily basis will become frustrating, so do wait a few weeks and you will begin to get some real data to analyse effectively.

3. Evaluate the design of your website. If you do look in your Google Analytics account and you have a high bounce rate (bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that exit your site immediately), then you need to re-visit your web site design and layout, there is no point optimising a website to attract visitors if they are just going to leave straight away (you only have a few seconds to persuade your visitor to stay - so use those seconds well). If you are weak at design try and look up similar website in the same industry as you, for example a corporate website will have a different feel to a celebrity blog - you need to determine what you target audience expect to see.

4. Check cross browser compatibility. Check your website appears the way it should using Mozilla Firefox 2.x, Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and finally Safari 3.x. Furthermore ensure you check your website on both MAC and PC, again there’s no point spending a lot of time on design if your website doesn’t render properly in all browsers.

5. Visit your HTML code and optimise all of your content as per your research in part 1.
You must ensure that all of the keywords / key phrases you have identified as being important to include in your website are in the correct places in your HTML code.
You must ensure they are present in : -

• Page title
• H1 tag on each page
• H2 tag on each page
• Keywords in body content, preferably once at the beginning, a few times in the middle and then again at the end
• Optimise your URL architecture and website folder structure. e.g. its good practice to use www.fashionwebsite.com/shirts/long-sleeve-shirt.html instead of www.fashionwebsite.com/allclothes/?type=shirts=… and so on.
• Ensure all of your content is at the most 3 clicks away. This can be achieved using a sub menu e.g. Mens Clothes > Shirts > Long Sleeve Shirts - try not to make anymore categories (or clicks) than this.
• Alt image attributes, when you use an image on your page you have the opportunity to give that image an alternative name e.g (alt=”long-sleeve-blue-shirt”), ensure your images include your keyword but only if applicable, its bad practice to name your logo “long-sleeve-blue-shirt” this is known as word stuffing.
• If you do not wish search engines to index certain pages e.g. “legal” or “terms and conditions” pages (there is no reason why you would want search engines to display these pages to your visitors - if your website visitors need to view these page they still can by using the link on your website) just add a simple line of code : - rel=”nofollow”, so a link to your page to terms and conditions for example would look like : - <a href=”http://www.fashionwebsite.com/terms-and-conditions.html” rel=”nofollow”>Terms and Conditions</a> thus ensuring this page will not be indexed by search engines and will mtherefore pass more link juice to other more important pages like “long sleeve shirt” - these are your money pages and should have the most exposure.

6. Decide if you need a meta description - If a meta description has not been used the search engines do a great job of scanning the on page content and displaying appropriate text in the search engine results page for your page description. Meta descriptions are extremely important, you could look at this as your text ad for your website, as this is what people see when searching the Internet, your meta description should persuade the search to click through to your website, it needs to be enticing but factual, furthermore be sure to include your keyword / key phrases - but do not word stuff.

7. This is especially true for SEO local search. At the bottom of every page be sure to include your company / personal address and phone number, search engines are great at picking up phone numbers, postal / zip codes and addresses, this is then relayed back to the search engine local business center, hence ensuring your website appears higher in local search.

8. Before i mentioned using rel=”nofollow”however if you forget to markup a link correctly the search engine still may find a way to index certain pages that you did not want them to. An effective way around this is to add a robot.txt file - Lean How To Make and Upload a robots/txt file . This file allows you to specify what pages you do no want the search engine to index, furthermore including a robot.txt file make tracking search engine easier because they always download this file before navigating your website.

There you have it, carrying out the research in part 1 allows you to implement the correct keyphrases in the right place, ensure you don’t miss out on part SEO For Local Search - Off Site Factors by subscribing to the RSS or email updates.

Do you anymore SEO Local Search tips, if so list them below : -

Technorati Tags: SEO Local Search, SEO, Search Engine Optimisation

Many factors are taken into consideration when the search engines; the major ones being Google, Yahoo and MSN rank your website.

One of the most influencing factor are back links.

What Are Back Links?

A back link is when a website links to you. One link from a website to your website is like a vote, and a lot like competition polls, the more votes you get the higher you appear in the result tables, in this case the SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages).

Where Can I Get Back Links From?

This will be covered later on in more detail however the aim is to obtain links from websites that have been around for 5, 6, 7 years; really trusted domain names, possibly links from universities, libraries and government departments, even though obtaining links from places like is difficult to achieve.

OK Where Do I Start?

Start with your competitors. OK lets say i own a Flower Shop and i have just published my sparkling new website, but now i need to generate traffic to my site and increase the presence of it in the search engines.

One of the places to start is your competitors.

A quick search for ‘flower delivery’ in Google reveals that the number 1 position is: http://www.serenataflowers.com/.

To see who is linking to http://www.serenataflowers.com/ (voting for this website) simply type the following command into Google: - 

‘link:http://www.serenataflowers.com’

Don’t just rely on Google, use the same command for MSN and Yahoo. MSN and Yahoo will display alot more back-links than Google. You should use the results for good research, competitor analysis and for generating ideas on how you can obtain links too.

Here you can see that http://www.serenataflowers.com/ has 242 linking to it.

 As you can see one of the back links is from: http://www.marketmarks.com/gifts/help.html.

This is a website about Online Gifts and they offer a link exchange if you link back to them, this is known as reciprocal linking, but nevertheless is one way to get links to your website.

A simple search for ‘flower directory’ displays a list of directories for ‘flower’ related websites where the opportunity to add a link back to your website is given, this is known as directory submission and i will be expanding on this very soon.

Once you have discovered who is linking to your competitors, find out exactly how this occured. Perhaps some evolved from a blog talking about news articles or some of the links may have came from a product or service testimonial (Using Testimonials For Website Visitor Conversion). 

 Your chances of successfully obtaining links are improved when you know exactly why other websites are linking to your competitors.

Furthermore you will also know what approach to use when contacting people to obtain links.

What Should I Say?

Well you may have written an interesting article about product ‘X’ and the website you want a link from may sell this product. You could drop them an email and explain how this article is related to their products and it would be worthwhile linking to it as it offers ‘X’ for your readers - would you consider liking to this?.

Other Methods to Obtain Back Links?

Use Search Engines

Search Google for websites who are actively seeking other website to link to (these are often directories).

Executing a simple search e.g. ‘flowers “add url”‘

Write Great Content

More often that not the links your website will obtain will be natural. By writing a great article about your subject area will encourage other webmasters and bloggers etc to link to you, hence providing link worthy content, using the flower example you may produce an article titled “How To Arrange Flowers”. ‘how to’ and ’list’ articles (e.g. top 5 ways to look after your flowers) are brilliant ways of producing link worthy content.

I will be posting alot more tips on this subject so dont miss out and subscribe to How To Website using RSS or even better email subscription, simply use the subscribe links at the top right hand corner of the page.

Small Business Search Engine Optimisation - Research

HowToWebsite.co.uk have been working on a number of Search Engine Optimistaion campaigns over the past 5 years for local businesses whose target market are in the local and surrounding areas. This article has been split into 3 separate parts, the first is about research and its importance in Search Engine Optimisation for Small Businesses and Local Search.

Research

1.  Establish your goal

Why do you want people to find your website? Is your website purely informational or do you have a set list of clear objectives that you want your visitors to accomplish? e.g. increase downloads of sales brochures, increase leads for a particular product or do you want people to contact you by phone? You need to set some clear objectives for your website, start with a list of five, implement the functionality, test and revisit.

2.  Begin Brainstorming

Brainstorm in a group or on your own and create a list of some potential search queries that you believe your target audience may type into a search engine to find your website, for example a Car Trading company operating in the West Midlands area may brainstorm such queries as; ‘cars west midlands‘, ‘used cars west midlands‘ etc. Try and establish a list of 2-4 key words for your homepage and then 1or 2 keywords per product page, for example a Car Trading company may offer different types of products/services e.g. Car Insurance, in this example they may use key words such as ‘cheap car insurance‘ or ‘budget car insurance‘.

3. Research Your Keywords 

Use the Google Keyword Tool to research the keywords you should use on your website. Be careful not to use keywords with a lot of competition. For example optimising a new website (with little online presence) which is quite small in size (total pages) for the key word ‘cars‘ may not generate the desired amount of traffic quickly, you may not appear high enough in the search engine result pages (SERPS) as the competition is too fierce.

Optimising for a more niche long tail key word (longer phrase) will probably generate more traffic in the short term as competition is usually lower. Furthermore optimising for niche long tail keywords will deliver more targeted traffic. Somebody searching for ‘used cars in the west midlands‘ will probably not be in a position to travel to Edinburgh for example if there are used cars for sale in their local area, you should ideally try to use your local town or county within the keyphras as long as it delivers a substantial amount of traffic. Below is a rough estimate of search queries for the terms shown below: -

‘used cars west midlands’ : 1,600 searches

‘cars’ : 414,000,000 searches 

4. Once you have a clear list of keywords write them down or enter them into a spreadsheet under each page heading e.g. Homepage : ’used cars west midlands‘, Product 1 (Car Insurance) : ’cheap car insurance companies’.

5. Your Competitors

Enter your search terms into the search engine(s) of your choice, www.google.co.uk, www.yahoo.co.uk etc and analyse the current search engine results pages (SERPS). Make another spread sheet and record who is ranking for that keyword (top 5 will do), furthermore record what they are doing effectively and ineffectively. You need to be in a position where you are aware of who your competition is and what sort of online presence they have.

6. Referring Traffic

Use Google Link Command or Yahoo Site Explorer and discover who is linking to and sending traffic to your competitors. Make a list of your competitors referring sites.

7. Check Inclusion

If your website is already up, you have low traffic and believe your website is not appearing in the SERPS go to www.google.co.uk and type in the following entering your domain name as shown ’site:www.YOUR-DOMAIN-NAME.com/co.uk’ for example HowToWebsite.co.uk would use ’site:www.howtowebsite.co.uk’. If your site has not been indexed you need to figure out what is preventing this from happening.

If your website has been indexed by the search engines perform searches for the keywords that are present in your page titles, web page titles can be found in the very top left hand corner when you have your website loaded in your browser. If you are ranking for these keywords make a record of what position they appear in the SERPS.

Go to Part 2 >

Technorati Tags: Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, Website Optimisation

Web Hosting and SEO - Search Engine Optimisation

We have seen many organisations completely ignore Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) when considering a hosting package, web hosting and seo should be a key consideration in the selection process. SEO is an important step in creating a website and should should be taken into serious consideration before you even begin to build your website, one of the considerations here is hosting.

Country Specific Domain Names

If the majority of all of your customer base is located for example in the UK, then you should get hosting in the UK – get your own UK hosting here. However if your server is located in the US for example you can still localise your domain to improve rankings on Google UK search.

Staying on the example of serving a customer base largely or complete based in the UK using a TLD: .co.uk tells search engines that your are indeed based in the UK. Even having a .co.uk domain name and a server hosting your website in Germany or the US having that crucial .co.uk is a strong enough statement
However don’t be tricked into typing ‘UK Web Hosting’ into Google and going with the first result as some UK Web Hosting companies actually have servers based overseas and with the combination of a .com domain name your chanced of appearing in the Google UK search from the web and pages from the up is limited.

In an ideal world in this scenario you should have reliable hosting in the UK and a .co.uk domain name, however there are ways around it if you do not.

If you are based in the UK and own a .com and not .co.uk, you could purchase .co.uk TLD  - get your uk domain here and forward your .com to the .co.uk however there is risk in this if you site has build up a good reputation and has a strong back link campaign and high page rank. You can always try to localise your domain.

But in conclusion to rank in a regional specific area you either need hosting in your country or a local TLD e.g. .co.uk, you don’t necessarily need both. 

Avoid Cheap Web Hosting - consider both web hosting and seo …

Simply knocking up a quick website, rushing the design, back end coding and on site search engine optimisation and finally wacking it onto the cheapest server you find is not going to deliver any success at all, if you are serious about creating a professional authoritative website then you really needs to invest wisely in web hosting. As mentioned above why attract unwanted visitors from unwanted locations.
Sometime cheap hosting companies will offer ridiculous amount of free space, however this can have an adverse effect on down time, and this means that your website may not always be available upon request. This not only has a knock on effect on SEO but also website usability as it may cause problems for website visitors to visit your website when they want to, what is worth adding here also is if search engine spiders cannot access your website and follow links throughout your site this will obviously have an effect on your SEO campaign.

Again some webhosts that offer cheap hosting use a method where your domain is redirect to the back of another Website. This can cause problems with the search engines reaching your website and website content.

I have also found that some cheap hosting providers host sites that have been banned from the search engines; this of course will have more than a negative effect on search engine rankings.

Avoid Hosting Multiple Domains on the Same Server

Yes it does seem very tempting to buy server space and hosting more than one domain. Let’s just say that search engines e.g. Google may frown upon this type of behavior. Search Engines may believe that the company hosting these multiple domains is attempting to artificially link together hence trying to manipulate search engine with the objective of increase rankings in the search engine results pages. However this can and often does results in a decrease in SERP rankings.

In conclusion consider web hosting and seo as working to compliment each other in your efforts to achieve effective search engine ranks, check out the resources below.

Fore our recommended web hosting packages click here

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, UK Domain Names, UK Web Hosting