Scotland SEO Blog

There are times when a gentle reminder on how best to optimise your pages can go a long way. One thing that I notice a lot when surfing the Net is the poor optimisation of images, particularly images that overlap other areas of a page. There is really no excuse for that and it does indicate a lack of respect for readers and an amateurish approach to web site design.

Resizing an image is one of the easiest tasks to perform. Simply using the width= and height= commands will enable you to resize an image. You can, for example, alter the size of a graphic in percentage terms – width=”50%” height=”50%” or width=”120%” height=”120%”. Be sure to keep the graphic in perspective by using similar sizes for height and width. You can get away with using the width command on its own, most browsers will then alter the height to keep it all in perspective.

For search engines, there are a number of ways to optimise your images. These include:

• Using text in the file name rather than just image001,
• Including the ALT tag with descriptive text,
• Including the TITLE tag with descriptive text, and
• Placing your image in line with relevant content

There is an argument that suggests that the title tag is no longer relevant. However, since it doesn’t hurt your optimisation, why not include it? Placing your image in line with relevant content can also be important. It reinforces the text used in the ALT tag and provides the search engine with further proof of the image’s relevance.

Other suggestions include placing your images high on the page; hosting the image off site to increase load times (and reduce your own server times); and using smaller images rather than larger.

Images can be important to your pages. Optimise first for the reader in such a way they enhance your page rather than detract from it. Then include tags to help the search engines.

Bing has certainly made an impression on people and it continues to make the news. Whether you like Bing as a search engine or not, there is a good chance it will make inroads into Google’s dominance. Whether or not it becomes a serious threat is another matter, of course, but Microsoft is certainly doing every possible to achieve that goal.

Google became popular simply because they were able to do what most search engines at the time couldn’t and that was deliver reasonable results gathered from across the web. Today, it is probably fair to say that people use Google out of habit as much as out of any loyalty. By increasingly appearing in the news, and by being spoken of, Bing is certainly getting its name out there.

Are they now going to a new level of exposure? Microsoft and Facebook are extending their partnership whereby Bing will deliver all search results along with all the current Bing bells and whistles. Facebook, of course, is the second most visited site on the web (behind Google). What is more important about this announcement is that Bing will provide search results for Facebook worldwide now, rather than just in the US. If just ten percent of Facebook users access search from within Facebook, that will be a huge jump in Bing’s search numbers.

Can Bing threaten Google? Who knows what the future holds. If Microsoft can continue its branding efforts, Bing could well become another household word. Delivering the search results for Facebook will give that branding effort a huge boost. If they can deliver the goods when it comes to search results, they may even build a loyal following.

For those engaged in search engine optimisation strategies, the time may be right to focus a little on Bing. A little work done now could pay huge results down the track.

If you have a static website then the chances are you are not adding new content to it on a regular basis. From what I have seen, the chances are you have pretty much used a set and forget strategy. Sure, you apply SEO techniques to rank your pages, but that’s about it. Do yourself a favour and use the reduce, reuse and recycle trend that our society is favouring. How?

Time to dig out your analytics software to check how your pages are doing when it comes to traffic, bounce rates and conversions. Do you have pages that rank well and receive a lot of traffic yet have high bounce rates? These pages are probably looking a little old and tired, perhaps the content is also a little outdated. Refresh it – or rather, recycle it. Bring the content up to date, perhaps even give the page a fresh new look. Don’t forget to put a date on it somewhere that shows it has recently been updated. It shows you are keeping your content up to date and providing useful information to readers.

If you have pages that are obviously outdated – for example, product pages where the product no longer exists – consider removing these pages. Don’t forget to use a redirect so search engines and visitors don’t see a 401 Page Not Found error. The alternative is to add a message with a link to the latest product at the very top of the content section of your page. Make sure it stands out.

For pages that still bring in traffic and convert well, make use of them. Can you add a few links that may carry a little link juice to pages that you are trying to promote? Little tasks like bookmarking these pages may bring in even more traffic.

A website, even a static website, should never really remain static. Times change; information needs updating; and valuable traffic that comes into your pages should be leveraged to your advantage – not lost and never seen again. Content development is an ongoing process – it includes a little in the way of reduction, reusing and recycling.

If you have had a website up and running for several years you may wonder why it struggles to rank in search results. It has all the necessary requirements – age, inbound links, content and well optimized pages. What more could it need? Perhaps your links are a little old and outdated.

But links are links, aren’t they? Yes and no. The quantity of relevant high ranking links is important. However, the age of links is also important. Let’s look at two similar pages. Both several years old, both highly relevant to a search phrase, and both with a large number of inbound links. If one of these pages is still attracting links now then its relevance gains a further boost. The other page may not have earned a link for 6-12 months, which may indicate stale content.

So how do you turn that around? There are several approaches you can take. The first is to simply add a blog. By linking to those older pages from your blog you are providing fresh links and implying that this content is still relevant. Add to this social bookmarking and promotion through social networking and you can soon gather some fresh links to this content.

WebProNews has an interesting look at the situation. Search engines are looking at what is happening now. Even something as simple as leaving your comments open on old content could help. New comments indicate that visitors are still participating with the page’s contents.

While ’stale’ links don’t necessarily lose any value, fresh links add to what you have already achieved and signal that a page is still relevant. Search engines are all about relevance now – so prove to them your content is still relevant by finding fresh links.

SEO is moving to an advanced phase where consultants now need to know much more than just optimising pages and building links. While a lot of attention is being focused on social media and marketing, there is still a lot to learn when it comes to straight out SEO – albeit a more advanced form. Structured data has become one of the issues that SEO consultants (and web developers) have come to terms with in recent years.

What is structured data? The best way to explain structured data to a novice is by way of an example. Let’s take a web page that provides instructions on how to make a humble cup of tea. The instructions would look something like:

• boil water
• place tea leaves in pot
• add boiling water and let steep for five minutes
• pour through strainer into a tea-cup
• add milk and sugar to taste

Now a person reading that can follow the steps with ease. To a search engine, they are really just a bunch of words that appear on a page dedicated to making tea. If the search engine could read the data a little differently, for example:

• boil water (to make cup of tea)
• place tea leaves in pot (to make cup of tea)
• add boiling water and let steep for five minutes (to make cup of tea)
• pour through strainer into a tea-cup (to make cup of tea)
• add milk and sugar to taste (to make cup of tea)

The search engine would then link the term boil water to that of making a cup of tea – and likewise the other steps. It provides some structure to the data that the search engines can understand. It’s a very basic explanation but I hope you get the idea. The data has some structure and relevance to the page as a whole.

There are numerous way to achieve this, the two methods generally recognised now being microformat and RDFa HTML tags. These tags don’t alter the way the data is presented to users. In fact they don’t even know these tags exist without looking for them.

How do they help with SEO? Google is looking to use structured data to build on the information presented in search results. Yahoo has gone a step further with an application known as Search Monkey. With Search Monkey, you can create your own display for the search results – visit Yahoo to see an example.

What you can do is add product information, embed videos, show comment numbers and ratings, local information like telephone and address details, and even game previews. The end result is a much better display in the search results – one that stands out and catches the eyes. If you’re comfortable with structured data then enter the world of advanced SEO and re-create your search results display in Yahoo.

There’s an interesting question. Blogging – is it a part of SEO or a part of marketing? Either, both, neither? Take your pick because you’re probably right. Blogging is what you want it to be. If you use a common sense approach then your answer should be both – and your approach should be to use it for both marketing and SEO purposes.

Sometimes there are too many either/or discussions when the reality is that both suffice. For example, should you be on Twitter or Facebook? Why not both? When it comes to blogging, how you present your blog will determine whether or not it is successful.

I’d also like to distinguish between undertaking a strong SEO program on your blog – and using your blog as part of an SEO program. Your blog should be optimized for the search engines. In fact, if you are using your blog as part of your web site’s SEO program, the higher the ranking of that blog, the more authority it will pass on to your web site under the right conditions.

Blogs deliver information and marketing is, in reality, a process of delivering information. Sure, the delivery of information for marketing purposes is still build product and brand awareness. A blog can certainly do that. But here is the point – a blog can deliver a marketing message and still deliver on SEO. Marketing messages can still be keyword focused. Marketing messages can still link back to particular web pages. Marketing messages can still be optimized when it comes to titles and tags.

When putting together a blog, don’t look at it as being an SEO tool, or a marketing tool. Blogs can and will deliver on both so take advantage of them.

There are times when a web page can rank quite highly yet produce little in the way of conversions. This happens more often than many people realise and it can be a real problem. With a little lateral thinking, you may be able to leverage that traffic for e-mail marketing.

Let’s take a site dedicated to issues surrounding babies. No baby site is complete without information on, say, teething. However, there is not a lot you can do with the subject other than give advice. There is little in the way of sales and PPC ads only offer pennies for these types of keywords. Parents are looking for a quick fix. The problem is here and now so they want advice now. So give it to them.

At the same time, since you cannot convert that traffic into a sale, convert them into an e-mail subscription. You can do this using a standard e-mail subscription link, or you can offer them something in exchange like an ebook on articles on children’s health issues, for example.

Your page may be receiving 100’s of visitors each day, all of whom come and read and go. They increase your bounce rate and do little for the profitability of your business. By leveraging that traffic, you turn one-off visitors into long term potential customers. You won’t get a 100% subscription rate; in fact, you may only get a 5-10% subscription rate, but over a month that could mount into hundreds, particularly if you have more than one page that fits this issue.

I know some sites that go out of their way to produce content, not to create sales, but to attract visitors. There is often less competition for keywords (since they have such low monetary value) so ranking highly is not all that difficult. Convert them to e-mail subscriptions and you have a brand new customer base to offer products too. E-mail marketing is again proving to be popular. The hardest part is getting those signups. Leverage your low value traffic into high value subscribers.

Here are a couple of questions to start you off. What is SEO? Most people would state that it is a process used to promote their web pages to the top of the search results and to gain traffic from that placement. It’s a good enough answer. Question two. Can you define your web pages? Most people will tell you their web pages are the pages that form their web site. Again – a good answer but this time, not good enough.

Let me break this down into two issues. First – getting to the top of the search results. That takes a lot of work and some of that work includes gaining inbound links. The more authority behind those links, the more ‘juice’ they provide to your pages. As part of your SEO program, do you engage in article marketing, host videos or images on third party sites, or create HubPages or Squidoo lenses? These are, in a sense, still your web pages. Do you promote them?

In a perfect world (for you – not your competitors), your web page would rank at number one in the search results; your HubPage, number ;, Squidoo Lens, number 3; etc. Your competitors wouldn’t get a look in. We don’t live in a perfect world, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t promote those pages and, in effect, boost their exposure and rankings.

The spin off for you is that each of those external pages could deliver stronger link value. That will give your pages a boost in the search results.

“Traffic?”, I hear you ask. That, of course, is the second component of SEO. If your external pages are promoted and ranking well, they will naturally send traffic to your web pages – often targeted traffic. For your web site, it’s a win-win situation. Higher rankings and more traffic. SEO is not just about your own pages. Think about where you are promoting your website. Can you give those pages a boost – even by simply bookmarking them?

One of the difficulties that many businesses face when confronted with social media marketing is locating and connecting with people only in their local service area. This local service area could be as big as Scotland or the UK. It could also be as small as Dundonald or Ayrshire.

Facebook has been one social media site that has made connecting with locals reasonably easy. There are also local social networking sites that one can engage in. Twitter, one of the fastest growing social media sites, is making local connections a little easier.

You can of course do a search on Twitter based on regional names. There are, however, millions of users that don’t include that data in their profiles. Twitter’s new local trends, whilst not broadly available as yet, could make life a lot easier. At present, local trends is only available for a few large cities like London and the UK. They will be extending it over time – how local is yet to be seen, however, it still may make life easier for local businesses.

If you’re located here in Scotland then at some stage Scotland data, and perhaps even data from smaller regions, will be available. I can see three immediate benefits from this data. First, you can see which users are setting and following these trends, and add them to your lists. They either reside in, or have in an interest in, that particular region.

Secondly, if you plan a marketing program and it appears in the trends, you will know you have hit the right formula. Finally, by knowing what is trending in your region, you can modify your own approach to take advantage of those trends – ride on the back of them. Social media marketing is here to stay and is growing in importance every day. If you’re a local business servicing a local area, it makes sense to connect with as many people from your area as possible. They are all potential customers so bring them into your sphere of influence and as quickly as possible.

Where a user types in a search phrase, they are presented with a range of options to choose from. Why should they click on your listing instead of someone else’s? It comes down to trust sometimes and the best way to earn that trust instantly is by having multiple exposures within those Scotland local search results. How do you increase your exposure?

Easy.

Let’s look at a typical results screen for a product search. You will almost always have a local maps windows with local businesses listed. You will also have organic search results, images and perhaps even videos. Add to that the sponsored results (Adwords PPC) and you have at least five opportunities to gain a listing. Images and videos won’t have an immediate impact. The other three will. How do you get that triple hit?

Claiming your business and optimizing it for Google Local will help to increase your chances of appearing in the Google Maps window. Effective SEO will, hopefully, see you listed high on the page in organic search. Add to that a strong well-ranked PPC program and it, too, should appear on that results page.

You may wonder you would bother to add PPC if you are already appearing in both the local and organic search results. The human brain is a strange creature. The sub-conscious will often register all three listings as the reader quickly scans the results. The conscious part of the brain may only register one appearance. Because the subconscious had registered all three appearances, that one appearance registered by the conscious part of the brain will stand out. It will almost tweak an ‘I remember that site’ type result and the click.

Research is already showing that the more exposure you get on a page, especially when it isn’t an in-your-face type banner, the more likely the user is to click through to your site.

It’s a straight forward Scotland SEO tactic that can often double your click-through rate in search results. If you also have images and videos appearing on the one page – bonus – a five way hit.