All posts in search engine marketing

As with selling any service, selling SEO services is an extremely challenging task. Here are my observations of two opposite ends of the spectrum of what SEO consultants often experience with selling SEO services.

Give me a two day optimisation strategy

We’ll often get contacted with the following, “We want a two day web optimisation strategy implemented.” Many neophyte consultants lick their lips and pounce on the ‘opportunity’ with alacrity. They start shooting off proposals, buffing up their hallowed methodology, and more.

A more sane, measured and customer-serving response to the request for a two day optimisation precess is, “Why?”

That always stops people in their tracks. “Why do you want a two day strategy implementation for your website and how do you know that’s the right thing for you?”

SMX London 2012Once again, we are proud to be a blog partner for the SMX Advanced London 2012 conference. The event takes place on 15-16th May 2012 at Chelsea Football Club – Stamford Bridge.

In order to receive a 15% discount, just enter the code SEOPTIMISE012 when signing up online. There are different packages available and the prices go up after 30th March so it’s best to book early!

For coverage of previous events, please check out the presentations we have delivered and posts we have written:

It’s that time of year again, where everyone is starting to think about which UK search conferences and events to attend.

So for 2012, I’ve put together a conference calendar of search events – let me know if there’s any I’ve missed!

February:

March:

Last week I setup a Facebook poll to ask people what they considered to be the most significant change in search during 2011. This has received a great response, so here are the results so far (you can still take part on the SEOptimise fan page):

Last week I spoke on the SSL search panel at the SAScon mini conference in Manchester.

This is a great conference, with the main SAScon event taking place in May – and to cover main tips and takeaways from this I’ve listed the top 28 tweets:

Testing products not enough - spend time talking to your customers #sascon
November 24, 2011 3:10 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite
@kevgibbo
Kevin Gibbons

"@: #sascon social: like link building - look for authority not quantity"
November 24, 2011 3:47 pm via Mobile WebReplyRetweetFavorite
@seobelle
Sadie Sherran

Ok so the “Top 20,001 takeaways” type posts have already been done, so I wanted to make this more of a general view of the themes emerging from this year’s SearchLove conference. I suspect that summarising general trends in what was discussed might be a pretty good reflection of where the SEO industry is now and where it’s heading.

I’ll start off by saying that I enjoyed SearchLove a whole lot more than the other SEO conferences I’ve been to, and not just because of the great food and excellent Monday night party! I felt there was a great deal of enthusiasm among those present, and I came away from the conference feeling inspired and eager to try out the new ideas I heard.

Last week I asked on Twitter to see what common SEO mistakes were still being made by retail websites. This received a great response, so I thought I’d share the top replies with our readers.

I’ve picked some UK high street retail examples to help display the issues raised, but please note that we have no connection with any of these websites – so this is an outside perspective. There may be logical reasons for the examples which we are unaware of, but these have been used in order to highlight where SEO mistakes are commonly made.

Non-descriptive URL structure

Ideally you want to keep your URLs concise and keyword descriptive. So automatically generated, ID-based URLs aren’t going to help your SEO, unless you’re aiming to rank for g474502s2 - in which case Next.co.uk have dominated market share!

Next SEO

 

If you’re already using paid search marketing, how can you improve your results? Here are nine tips for sharpening up your campaigns.

Use conversion tracking & Google Analytics
Which keywords produce what results? Which cause people to make purchases, which result in newsletter sign-ups, which drive traffic to your forum or blog? You need tracking to answer these questions. AdWords (or AdCenter) will tell you what ads searchers click, but it won’t say what they do when they get to your site.

If you don’t have any conversion tracking installed yet, then install it. AdWords and AdCenter have their own conversion tracking, which records a conversion when someone who clicked on an ad subsequently visits a page on your site with conversion tracking code. This is usually a ‘thank you’ page for a sign up, or a receipt page after a purchase – it depends on your website’s goals.

Last week I ran a Facebook poll to ask what people considered to be their favourite search conference in the UK.

This received a great response (197 votes in total) – and we can now announce that the winners of the competition were Think Visibility, who collected 63 votes!

SAScon Manchester and BrightonSEO made it a great result for the smaller events as they finished second and third respectively, with 56 and 29 votes – ranking ahead of some of the much bigger organised London events. Thanks to everyone who took part!

When speaking to small business owners, I often find myself being told that SEO isn’t right for them. Unsurprisingly, I rarely agree. So I thought I’d write about the five most common reasons people give for not adopting an SEO strategy and outline why I think they’re wrong.

Reason one:  I’m just a small, local business

There’s a common misconception that SEO will only benefit companies that are already operating on a national or even international scale. Many small businesses only want to attract customers in their local area. Casting a wider net would be a wasted investment as the firm can’t cater for a non-local customer base.

Why you’re wrong

From an SEO perspective, it’s actually much more effective to target geo-specific keyword phrases. Geo-targeting will help attract visitors in your own local area when you optimise your website for search queries with a geographic preference, such as ‘Cheshire chimney sweep’.

 

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