Search Engine Marketing

There seem to be general agreement that using video to promote your website can have a beneficial effect. But there are a number of issues that need to be addressed:

• If someone visits a webpage and is immediately submerged in a cacophony of sound, they are very likely to leave before they’ve even read the heading. To a lesser extent, any animation can have a distracting effect, especially if it was not expected. The answer to this problem is not to have the video play automatically. If there is a play button users can view the video when they are ready and adjust the sound to their needs.
• Is the video of a sufficient quality? Presumably you are proud of the quality of your website and the photographs it contains, so surely the video should be to the same quality? Yet an amazing number of people allow poor quality video to ruin a professionally designed website. I suppose the reason is that they think a professional video will be too expensive and as they already own an HD camera, why not do it themselves. It is true that even quite inexpensive cameras can produce excellent technical results but what about the production values? They matter too, and poor sound is often what lets amateur videos down the most.
• Where will you host your video? Most people use YouTube or one of its less well-known rivals. YouTube can be a wise decision as it is next only to its parent, Google, as a brilliant search engine. Embedding the video into your website is easy and seamless for your visitors. But, although you can have a link from your YouTube page to your website, it is a ‘no follow’ link so has no value in pushing you up the search engine rankings. It will allow people to jump to your website, provided they click on the link. Possibly, the best option is to do both – host the video on YouTube and your own site, so people can find your video and your website at the same time, but if they find the video on YouTube, that’s good too. In fact there is no reason why you can’t host the video on all the hosting sites. Unlike text articles there is no downside to duplicated content.
• Wherever you host your site it is essential to optimise it properly. This means have a relevant and complete title and a description that will encourage visitors to click on the video. Accurate tags are also useful in helping searchers find your video.
• Once you’ve uploaded and optimised your video don’t forget to announce its presence on the social networking sites. Facebook and Twitter are the obvious ones but there are plenty of others. There are also many bookmarking sites which can play their part in getting your video watched.
• My final point should really come first. Are you sure you need a video? Will it help people understand what you have to say better than any other media? The problem with video is that it is non-linear, in other words it goes at its own pace and insists on completing one idea before moving on to the next. An article like this one is very different. You can scan the paragraphs and if you don’t see what you’re looking for quickly move on to the next. A video requires more commitment to watch it through from beginning to end. Some subjects do lend themselves to the video treatment – you may be interested in these  website video examples, which include “need to know” instructional films to the ever popular testimonial.

We gave V1 SEO an early spring clean over the weekend and at the same time tidied the look up a bit.

SEO : SEO Blog : SEO Tips : SEO Tools : Free SEO Advice

We also tidied up the Google+ Widget, The latest posts feed, and also made the review system a little more prominant.

With Google+ and the Google +1 button attracting more debate as to whether they will effect organic listings in the SERPs, V1 SEO have updated their Google +1 Checking Tool to make it more user friendly, easier on the eye and quicker to use.

As more people appear to be wanting to know how many google +1′s a website has received increases, the +1 Count Checker is being used more and more has now checked over 10,000 URL’s to see how many Google Plus Ones they have.

A trend we are noticing is that some people are checking URL’s multiple times and sometimes coming back and checking again on other days, we suspect one reason for this is that they are either people who are selling Google +1′s, people using the V1 SEO Google +1 Button Checker to increase their Google Plus Onecount or just automated systems looking for ways to increase +1 counts.

It’s nice to see some people using the +1 checker to see which website* has the most google +1′s

This still appears to be http://www.google.com/+/demo/

If you find a web page with a higher Google +1 count please let us know.

* The Google +1 button measures individual URL’s rather than websites.

Despite the fact Twitter links are nofollowed and don’t help with Page Rank there are still a number of ways in which Twitter can be used as an SEO Tool.

The following article provides a number of tips on how to use Twitter for SEO and improve your Social Media Marketing.

1. Twitter Profiles
2. Relevant Content
3. Followers
4. RSS feeds
5. Engagement
6. Branding
7. Trust
8. Display URL
9. Freshness
10. Integration

We will expand further on these topics shortly.

I’ve tried to contact Google a number of times over the years, but seldom hear anything back except for the usual automated replies you have probably received yourselves.

So when I came up with the idea of including my Google Places listing on my own website and using it as a way to attract reviews I thought I would ask people what they think.

I set up a page so people could write Reviews of UK Small Business Directory by using an iFrame to pull in my Google Places listing and display it in a 940px wide div on a specially made page.

After hearing the comments people were making about how good it looked, and what a good idea it was, I thought I would try again to contact Google to see what they thought,  and also suggest they make an official version which people could embed on their own sites and that would allow people to sign in to their own Google accounts without having to leave the page it was embedded on.

Effectively this would be a new Widget / Gadget which would compliment all that is going on with Google+ at the moment.

Well, it was over 2 weeks since I contacted Google with the suggestion and as per usual, no acknowledgement or reply again.

I think I’ve finally come to the conclusion it is pointless even trying to contact anyone at Google, let alone try to make any suggestions.

I would love to know if anyone has ever had a reply from Google other than from the AdSense or AdWords teams. If so, I would appreciate knowing who your first point of contact was, please email if you can help 1@v1seo.co.uk

Many thanks,
TJ

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I’m quite often asked for my top 10 SEO Tips or Top 10 SEM Tips so have listed some of these below. They are not necessarily in order of importance, but are hopefully laid out in a way that make sense.

1. Competitor Analysis – Before even trying to rank high in Google you should first analyse the competition to decide whether the expenditure of an SEO campaign is worthwhile. There is little point being number 1 in Google if the sites in the positions just below you are selling the same products cheaper than you or are popular well established retailers.
2. Keyword Research – It’s all very well being number 1 in Google for a keyword or key phrase, but what good is that if no-one ever searches for those keywords and phrases, likewise don’t spend your entire SEO budget trying to rank high for extremely popular keywords that are out of your budget.
3. Competitor Analysis(2) – I can’t emphasise enough how important I personally consider competitor analysis, a large number of SEO companies will take on clients whose expectations far outweigh what can be achieved on their budgets, spend the total budget and leave the client out of pocket and still only with rankings that don’t produce a ROI. Another phase of competitor analysis should follow the keyword research to assess whether it is practical to target the keywords / key phrases selected (Note: This stage is sometimes combined with Keyword research)
4. Page Titles – Still considered by many to be the most important aspect of on-page SEO. Page titles throughout the site should reflect the content of each individual page, be as descriptive as possible about the content on the page and include the prime keyword/phrase of each page.
5. Page Structure – Remember, Google is just a machine it likes things to be simple clear and structured. Give Google a nice structured page to crawl, let it come to the page, read the most important information, skip through the secondary content, find a nice structured internal navigation system and quickly and easily move on to your next page.
6. Linked Headers – A key point of page structure. Correctly head the content of your page by importance and relevance with linked headers H1 to H5
7. Site Navigation – Again, a key point of page structure. Site navigation should be clear, precise, descriptive and use the correct anchor text whenever possible.
8. Quality Content – Page content should be appealing, informative and encourage visitor engagement.
9. Alt Attributes – These shouldn’t be overdone so that they look spammy but keywords should be used whenever images are displayed
10. Locations – Remember if you are a local service to frequently display the location where you provide the service. There is nothing more annoying than being on the web page of a local service but having no idea where they provide that service.

As I said this would only be my top 10 tips I will leave it there, but as this only a small part of SEO I will soon be updating my SEO Tips page at V1 SEO and including a lot more information.

Google has just released a whitepaper in conjunction with Nielsen called;

Beyond last click: Understanding your consumers’ online path to purchase

The study looks at consumers paths to purchase and pays particular attention to research time, how people research and how they use search engines in the process.

Here are some of the key findings that I picked out, a link to the full study is at the bottom of the page.

Note: The report is based on UK findings

• Internet contributed £100 billion to the UK economy in 2009
• 62% of UK consumers bought goods or services online
• The online advertising market is now worth over £4 billion in the UK
• £1 in every £4 of marketing budgets is spent online
• One in three sales occur 30 days after the online research began.
• 48% of purchasers switch between using generic and brand search terms
• Average number of different sites visited per purchase 4.4
• Average site visits per purchase 9.9
• Average time search per purchase 1hr 20 mins
• Excluding Travel, Average number of searches per purchase is 5
• 70% of consumers who purchase use search
• Individuals who buy online are 30% more likely to have used a search engine than individuals whose online research did not end with a sale.
• Half of all travel in the UK is booked online

Full study is here: http://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/google_clickstream_whitepaper.pdf

This article has received 4 Ducks – Gerald Duck