Crawling to success

Enabling easy crawling of your website by the search engine bots or spiders requires good internal linking architecture, this also helps usability of the site overall and can direct users to find content of particular interest to them.

It is imperative to have good site usability and overall site architecture to obtain good ranking in the SERP's.

How search engines find web pages on your website

Search engine directories use little software programs called spiders or bots to seek out the content that in turn is added to the search engine directories. These little software creatures are pretty simple in their workings and can only follow text links in majority of cases. It is essential to make the job of the indexing spider as easy as possible, site maps both HTML and XML should be used to give them a helping hand as it were.

Flash driven menus, Java scripting menus, search boxes cannot be read by most of these visiting little creatures and as such will give them no idea what content is in your site or where it is located. These little spiders are also a bit on the slack side and will not often delve to deep into your site. If your site is a massive site, with a page rank of 8 and receives thousands of visitors a day they may just spend much more time on your site. Alas though the majority of websites are not like this so we must leave the food bowl where they can easily access it.

Seven internal linking ideas that will improve your search engine rankings and overall usability of your website

Most search engine spiders do not type into your search boxes and they do not use pull down menus. The following tips will help you to make sure that search engine spiders will index your web pages correctly:

1. Use simple text links to link to your web pages

Most search engines cannot index fancy Flash or JavaScript menus. Some even have difficulty with image links. If possible, use simple text links to link to your web pages. You can make text links prettier by styling them with CSS.

2. Your most important pages should not be more than one click away from the index page

Web pages that can be accessed with a few clicks from your home page are considered more important than web pages that are buried deep inside your website. It's easier to get high rankings for these easy to access pages.

3. Use descriptive link texts

The text that you use to link to your web pages helps search engines to better understand your content.

If you sell acne products on your website, do not use links such as <a href="/greatcontent.html">Click here</a> but descriptive link texts such as <a href="/greatcontent.html">Proven Acne Treatment</a>.

That makes it easier for search engines to put the page into a context and it will be more likely that the page gets high rankings for the keyword "Proven Acne Treatment".

4. Related content

More for user usability but very important overall, a related content module is a good way to engage visitors to delve deeper into your content. If not using a CMS platform than a simple nice CSS box containing related content to what the user is reading can do the trick. You can see a list of today's popular content top right of this post.

5. In content links

Using in content links can be a great way for users to find extra content relating to what they are reading, you will often see in our own posts hyper linked content to further engage the reader. This tactic also gives the spiders extra information about the content within your site. With more information the search directories can better categorise your site and serve more targeted results to the people searching for your goods and services. Here is an example of in content linking, have you visited our SEO frequently asked questions yet? Did you also know you can ask an SEO question if you cannot find what you were looking for.

6. Create a sitemap

A sitemap is a simple web page that contains link to all important pages of your website. You could add a link to your sitemap in the footer of every web page. By doing this, search engines can find all important pages with two clicks. It is even better to create a XML site map and submit it to Google, Yahoo and NineMSN these sites maps are specifically for the use of search engine directories. If you have one of our CMS websites this is all done automatically for you, and updates the site maps every time content changes

7. Check the validity of your HTML code

Errors in the HTML code of your web pages can prevent search engines from indexing your web pages correctly. For example, an HTML error might indicate the end of a web page before the actual content begins. That would mean that search engines would skip the content and any links of that page. Follow the linked text to access the official W3C HTML validator.

Internal site structure plays an important role in how a site is indexed and indeed how it ranks in the SERP's the more information you can give a visiting spider the better. Usability helps rank as well, the lower the bounce rate and longer spent on site all add up in the ranking factors, this all ultimately goes towards your sites over all rank.

It is a careful balance of looking after the search engines and looking after the visitors, of course if you are a client of We Seo we look after all of this for you. Maybe you should give us a call on 1300 78 50 60.

Today I want to talk about design and development of e-commerce sites or on-line shops. Writing better title tags, meta description tags, clean URL's and the image ALT tag.

A lot of our clients come to us with on-line shops and the main issue we come across is title tags and page descriptions. When we are talking on-page optimisation the title tag and the meta description tag are highly important.

Unfortunately a great percentage of shops we see use the same title and description throughout the site. Another great problem we come across is not using a URL re-write to turn ugly URL's into user and search engine friendly URL's. This combination of errors completely destroys the sites organic ability to rank highly in the search directories.

I talk of 'organically' ranking as if we design the e-commerce site the right way, that is our result, a site that naturally is optimised for the search directories 'organic seo' which in turn makes the entire job of SEO easier.

Let us look at the 4 important criteria for good organic ranking

1. The title tag
2. The description tag
3. The URL
4. The image ALT tag

The title tag

First the title tag, this is what the user sees in the web browser bar (see fig 1.0) this needs to be written for the person looking at your site but also for the search engines, if we are talking a product based site this in essence is not overly hard. As I outlined earlier one common mistake is to have the same title tag throughout the website.

What not to do:

xyz.com.au The best resource for keyword keyword keyword keyword keyword

We see this so often it is not funny, in some cases the title tag is longer then the browser bar and is just the sites products or keyword phrases going on forever this is a real big no no. The other common fault is putting the domain name in the beginning of the title (this can be seen as SPAM) Furthermore Google advise not to do this either as laid out in their optimisation guidelines.

Before we start to write out title tag we need to consider the search engines let us look at Google and Yahoo, Google will display up to 66 characters including spaces and punctuation. Yahoo on the other hand will display up to 120 characters including spaces and punctuation, we can address this in two ways either limit out title to 66 characters or write a split title.

A split title for Google and Yahoo

SEO – Advice on writing better title tags for Google & Yahoo | On-page optimisation techniques & advise

Now the first part of the title is only 61 characters and will be indexed and displayed in full by Google, the second part is for Yahoo. Now with this method you need to understand how Google and Yahoo treat long titles. Google will display up to the last full word then crop accordingly so we will see the Yahoo and the pipe (|) Yahoo on the other hand just chops off once it has hit the character limit. So bare in mind if you are going to write split titles be  as close to the the limit on the Google side as possible so as to keep the title making sense.

Remember:

• Google 66 characters | Cuts off at last full word
• Yahoo 120 characters | Cuts of at word limit

The description tag

When it comes to the length on the description tag it should be noted that there is no actual limit on the length of the description but only a snippet is shown to the searcher, with this in mind we recommend the first 150 characters be written to form a concise enticing paragraph. It is also to be noted that the description tag will not directly influence your sites ranking. The snippet or description should be written to entice the searcher to click through to your website this is the primary job of the meta description tag.

For example the following description is shown in full on Google search

"WE SEO provide a complete marketing solution, Internet and direct marketing in Brisbane Sydney and Melbourne Call 1300 78 50 60 today."

Not only do we want our site to have good saturation and rankings within the search directories, but we want when the searcher is presented with a list of results, we want the highest chance for that user to click through to our website.

The URL

Unlike the description tag, the URL can and does have an impact on your sites ranking, a well written URL helps the search directories and the end user it should be descriptive. We find the URL is so often overlooked by the developers which is a shame as it is not difficult to integrate a URL re-write module into all modern .php based websites. The job of the url re-write is to turn a URL such as...

• http://www.xwz.com.au/category=06?productID=3&product=xwz00483
• into
• http://www.xwz.com.au/digital-cameras/canon/Canon-G9-Compact-Camera.html

The image ALT tag

When we insert an image into a web-page there is a tag called the image ALT tag, you may of noticed this when hovering your mouse over an image. Image ALT tags are also often forgotten about and another resource for search engines indexing and ranking your page has gone. Image ALT tags again should be descriptive to the page or product in question.

"Canon G9 digital camera"

Putting it all together

Let us look at an example of all these factors working together

The title

Digital cameras | Canon G9 compact camera 12.1 mega pixel | Reviewed as the best compact camera available | Free delivery

The description

Canon G9 compact digital camera, 12.1 mega pixel with image stability technology. Reviewed as the world’s best compact camera.

The URL

http://www.xwz.com.au/digital-cameras/canon/Canon-G9-Compact-Camera.html

The product image or images

Canon G9 digital compact camera

What does all this actually look like?

Here we have all the above as it would look in HTML format, you can see the HTML of your page by selecting view source in your web browser often under the 'View' tab in your browser navigation bar.

<title>Digital cameras | Canon G9 compact camera 12.1 mega pixel
| Reviewed as the best compact camera available | Free delivery</title>

<meta name="description" content="Canon G9 compact camera,
12.1 mega pixel with image stability technology Reviewed as the world's best compact camera." />

<img src=http://www.xwz.com.au/images/canon/canonG9.jpg" alt=Canon G9 compact camera">

How to make all this happen for your website

Now you may be sitting there going, "you lost me on the second sentence" so let us try and make it a little easier for you. If you have not yet built your new product based website, ask your developer about open source platforms such as.

1. http://www.drupal.org - Drupal
2. http://www.joomla.org - Joomla
3. http://www.magentocommerce.com - Magento

Drupal and Jooma are both CMS platforms, personally I would call Drupal more of a website framework than a CMS but none the less can still be considered a CMS or "Content Management System" Both these platform have shopping carts available for them with all the needed modules to make all we have talked about simple and hassle free. Best of all they are all free, as they are all open source. Magento is a complete product bases site solution and we highly recommend it. Magento is easy to use, and again all we have spoken about it comes with straight out of the box.

If you are having a product site built from scratch again this is all easy for a developer to implement into your site.

You want to ask your developer for the following.

1. Your product title should be injected into your "title tag" or
2. A page title field to allow you to write titles per product that will be "injected into the pages title tag"
   
3. Your short product description should be injected into your "meta description tag" or
4. A product description field that will be injected into the product's page "meta description tag"
5. You want an "Apache Mod URL re-write module" to be installed to turn your product titles into your URL's

How does it all work?

In most cases when adding new products to a store you are presented with a product name, short description and an ability to upload images. In the easiest scenario and let's look at Virtuemart a shop front module for the Joomla platform along with the plug-in SH404SEF a URL re-write module for the Virtuemart shopping cart.

In this scenario all you have to do is write good product titles following the advice we have laid out here and the same for the short product description. Now remember it about the first 150 characters that are going to be in the search snippet, in most cases you will be writing a longer short description than that, just be aware the first 150 characters are what is going or not going to make someone click to your site.

Assumptions

We cannot go into every platform available it would simply be to in-depth and quite complicated to talk about all the different ways this optimisation advice could take place. We also assume your website or future website is built using .php and running or will be running on a Unix based Apache web server. This is due to the fact it is the most common scenario.

Disclaimer

This article is only touching on what is required to achieve higher rankings and more traffic, apart from the mentioned ways to improve your page optimisation there is far more to be considered and many more optimisation techniques to gain more traffic and directory exposure. For a complete analysis or for a consultation for your on-line business please call one of our friendly consultants on 1300 78 50 60. We can take care of everything mentioned in the above article and help your business discover a whole new market base. Call WE SEO today and leave your mark on your market.

Yesterday we touched on using traditional marketing tactical media to generate online buzz, and influence the search engine ranking results. Today I want to go a little further into how to weather the sometimes long ride while an SEO campaign generates results.

In this article you will read tactics we use to generate targeted traffic for our clients, you will also learn of ways to gain exposure for your web presence. Because of the nature of seo, we look for ways to value add the process and give our clients the greatest exposure to their market as possible.

One of the hardest jobs for the seo account manager is keeping a client happy while a campaign generates results. First let us look at some of the reasons it takes time for a campaign to lift your site in the SERP's.

• Search engine spiders can be slow to return: The greater percentage of sites are not on the Google 'must crawl' list, a select few sites are crawled very regularly but is the exception rather than the rule. For most sites out there it can be a wait of several weeks if not three or four months before an entire site index is updated.
• It is not only about your site: If you have recently started a linking strategy with maybe a focus on viral content designed to real in those precious links, 'link baiting'. A considerable time period is going to elapse before you really feel the impact of the campaign. All those new links littered about also have to be crawled and indexed, and again this can take an incredible amount of time.
• It is a question of trust and patience is a virtue grasshopper: Let us assume the search directories have picked up on those valuable new links. Due to manipulative linking practises the algorithm waits to see just how credible these links are. It goes into our saying one good link is worth more than many. A link from a reputable source will stand the test of time, like a fine wine it will only get better with age. This is even more relevant for new domains if you have just popped up on the landscape you may have to wait a while before you can be trusted.

Domain age is more or less the same as how long your business has been established for, XYZ company since 1980 will give a prospective customer a far more fuzzy feeling then we just opened our doors, come and spend your hard earned with us.

Of course as the business owner it can be hard to be patient while forking out money every month that is greeted with you are seeing results, look you have gone from page 57 to page 10 in the SERP. It is little comfort when in fact you feel and you are no better off yet.

Firstly education is needed to understand why it does take time to lift your much sort after keyword phrases. Secondly a plan is needed to help overcome the wait while it does happen and to feel some benefit in your monthly spend.

Using the long tail to make clients happy

In a previous article we talk of the benefits of the long tail of search, again we are going to sing it's praises again. The long tail is basically search terms that are unique or equate to the less searched phrases. What is most interesting or important with the long tail is the conversion rate.

Lets look at two examples

• Used cars - a primary keyword phrase for used car yards
• Used car yard in Aspley Brisbane - long tail phrase

Now the second term is a long tail phrase and highly targeted, and hence has a far higher rate of conversion.

Lets look at another example

• Used BMW cars - primary keyword phrase
• Low mileage 3 series BMW for sale in Brisbane - long tail keyword phrase

Now it is also to be noted that on most sites it is the long tail that makes money and the primary phrases that generate traffic. So in essence we are better to have less traffic but targeted long tail phrases.

If we are searching for goods or services and we are ready to buy, we tend to get very specific about our search query. Part of this is buyer psychology, this is what I want, the other part is most searchers know if I do not get specific in my search, I am going to be presented with to many search results.

When we start a campaign for a client we concentrate our efforts on both sides of the fence, this generates our clients quicker results and in most cases they start to see increased sales in a shorter time period.

The long tail benefits

• Because long tail phrases have little competition compared to competitive primary keyword phrases, you see the results of the campaign much faster.
• With the phrases being highly targeted they are normally used by people who are ready to make the purchase.
• Long tail ranking phrases normally hold their position in the SERP's again due to the lower competition rate.

We can conclude that taking advantage of the long tail during the copy optimisation phase, and concentrating efforts to extend the amount of phrases we can rank for, will give good short term benefits. Furthermore we also know these same terms will rank far easier and for longer periods of time, than high competition primary keyword phrases.

Blogging for business

Previously we have written about the benefits of your business having a blog, and yet again we are going to use this most useful resource to further help our marketing cause. First we have to decide if your blog is going to be part of your main site as this blog is to our domain, or it could be a completely separate entity. There are positives for both, a same site blog is generating continual content to your site, this the search engines love and will return faster to index your site than if it is a rarely changing site. We can easily build relevant long tail search phrases which again is benefiting our main goal of converting traffic to sales. We are building good internal linking which in turn helps all content on the site to be indexed and stay indexed. If content you are writing is viral in it's nature and is attracting links we are going to see our main site page rank lift over time and importantly internal pages will receive good page rank as well.

We have a soap box to shout out about our goods and services without affecting the sites look and feel, we have an area to showcase the companies talent, and what results employees have been attaining for clients. It allows news pertaining to your market or PR releases to be simply posted. We can showcase new products or services the business is offering, we can keep a flow of case studies of how you have solved clients problems and what the benefits were. Blogging for business can make you an authority in your market place, while building credibility and becoming a hub of material relating to your industry.

Encouraging feed back from your market place can see your blog a hive of activity from satisfied clients, and if you are unfortunate enough to receive a complaint, it allows immediate damage control to fix the situation. Nipping problems in the butt can also be seen as a caring company, one who is concerned if a customer feels wrong done by. With the world of business becoming more accountable a company that is seen to fix a mistake and return to the market how they fixed it, can do more good than the damage any complaint could of done.

If you are writing viral targeted content pertaining to your market, this content can be picked up by the greater blogging community, posted to the various social sharing utilities, and targeted traffic can flow in. It is about using all the resources the internet can offer to better expose your business, to the market place.

We have a business blogging service with many service options, from the maintaining and posting of content supplied by the company, to completely managed scenarios with content written by professional copy writers. Most businesses already have a host of material relevant to their market, it is not difficult to turn this into worthwhile articles for a business blog. Staff within your company can take it in turns writing one piece a week relevant to your market, and their skill set. With so many benefits blogging can give your business it seems almost wrong not to take advantage of this medium.

Multiple channels of exposure

There are more ways to find targeted traffic than just Google, Yahoo and NineMSN, there are also good free and paid business directories and while I advise extreme caution with many paid directories you can easily dry run the value with a free listing first.

Here is a list of directories to have your site listed

1. www.dmoz.org
2. http://au.local.yahoo.com/
3. www.hotfrog.com.au
4. www.aussielocal.com.au
5. www.localbusinessguide.com.au
6. www.nationwidenetworking.com.au/free-business-listing-4.html
7. www.aussiepages.com.au
8. www.enterprisesearch.com.au/
9. www.webfind.com.au
10. www.suncoastconnect.com.au - Sunshine coast Queensland
11. www.webfind.com.au
12. www.livepages.com.au - Sydney directory
13. www.aussieweb.com.au
14. www.aussienow.com.au
15. www.ournoosa.com - Noosa Queensland
16. www.australiaonlineadvertising.com.au
17. www.perthperth.com - Perth
18. www.kmdirectory.com.au
19. www.goldcoastdirectory.com - Gold Coast Queensland
20. www.slinkydirectory.com.au
21. www.scrollcairns.com - Cairns Queensland
22. www.easybiz.com.au
23. www.bizmio.com.au
24. www.inperth.com.au - Perth
25. www.bizmiosydney.com - Sydney
26. www.bizmiomelbourne.com - Melbourne
27. www.tas.gov.au/tasmaniaonline - Tasmania
28. www.thecentralcoast.org/advertise.htm - Central coast
29. www.yarraranges.vic.gov.au - Yarra ranges
30. www.bizmiodarwin.com - Darwin
31. www.nationwide.com.au
32. www.ozsmallbiz.net/directory/index.php
33. www.perthbizwa.com - Perth
34. www.biztas.com - Tasmania
35. www.perthbusinessdirectory.com - Perth
36. www.canberraonline.com.au/directory - Canberra
37. www.bluemountainsbusinessdirectory.com - Blue mountains
38. www.aussieplus.com.au

This is just a taste of the free listing directories available but is a good start.

SEO can and does take time to breed good results but with maximising the potential from the long tail and and leverage added exposure from business directories we can offset the waiting period with untapped traffic sources.

Google local business centre, when you perform many searches you will of noticed the map that is displayed on the left hand side with a list of businesses, this is Google maps local business centre. Adding your business to this resource can be quote powerful as is always displayed on top of the organic results.

Submitting your content to Digg, although mainly a US resource it can still be valuable to submit your good viral content to digg, this can be a starting blog to people finding, sharing and linking to your content.

Another resource similar to digg is Propeller again a social sharing resource but please follow their guidelines for submitting content.

Yahoo answers for Australia can be another way to find targeted traffic, join and search for questions pertaining to your market, we have had and seen good results for a plethora of markets by taking advantage of this resource.

Social networking sites can be another great resource for sharing your content, Facebook for example has a simple button that can be added to your browser bar to share your content with your profile. With the surge of people using social networks and generation Y being a primary user furthermore using the resource for business purposes, social media just cannot be overlooked.

This article is just a taste of ways you can gain added exposure for your business and website, we use many of the resources and tactic we have mentioned here. If you are looking for a professional SEO company to leverage the greatest marketing medium available today, you simply must call We Seo, we understand the traditional and digital marketing space and keep up to date on the latest trends and resources. We are able to drive targeted traffic and unlock new markets for your company. Call today on 1300 78 50 60 or use our free consultation form and a account manager will return your call.

We are hearing everywhere that the economy is approaching a downturn, with the share market in turmoil and businesses thinking what next, this is the time to concentrate efforts on marketing your business smartly.

When we hear doom and gloom in the market companies tend to start the belt tightening, often cutting back on marketing spend, but is this really the smart thing to do?

When coming into times of recession we do need to analyse our business more than ever, and where a dollar can be saved or put to better use, we should be taking advantage of this. Cutting back on marketing can ultimately lead to a poor economy hitting our business more than it ever needed to. Smart marketing is needed to extract sales more than ever and targeting where our marketing spend is going.

When times are tough people do not forget what they wanted to buy, but will prioritise their spending to what matters most to them, a greater percentage of people will research more before they buy. If you are running a PPC campaign for instance you may find in tough times your spend is the same but the conversion rate is lower. People are researching more, buying less but are still keeping on mind what it was they wished to purchase.

Let's say for argument sake you are spending 6k per month on PPC, is it smart to keep this during a tighter market? How about we look at a smarter alternative. First we analyse our search and PPC traffic in particular the keywords that are driving traffic to the business. We then look at conversion rate over primary keyword use. You may of read in a previous article that long tail keyword phrases tend to convert at a higher rate than primary keyword phrases.

Any PPC company worth their salt know exactly what ads are converting for what keywords, and if you are managing your own campaign and using Google analytics you will also know what is converting and what is not. In most markets primary keyword phrases drive traffic, and the long tail of search makes sales.

So the first thing we are going to do is cut most of the primary keyword phrases out of our campaign and concentrate on the long tail phrases. You will of course notice a drop in PPC traffic to your site, but at the same time long tail phrases have a much lower cost per click, and a higher conversion rate so this maximises our ROI.

We are then going to put for example 2k per month into SEO, we are going to concentrate on the same long tail phrases and our primary keyword phrases related to our market. Because long tail phrases are easer to rank for, we will very quickly see the organic result listings running next to our PPC ads, this is a huge credibility booster to the searcher seeing your ad and organic results.

Now we are going to turn to our customer data base, creating tactical media with worth while offers and savings and perform a direct media campaign to the customer data base. A customer who has already bought from you is 65% more likely to purchase from you again than a new customer.

We can take this same tactical flyer and extend our reach into the greater community with a targeted flyer distribution, every client we have using tactical targeted flyer distribution is reporting good results. When you look at the fact 5000 full colour two sided flyers are only $495 and add $250 for distribution we have a powerful cost effective marketing resource.

In essence we have taken a committed marketing spend and made it work for our business over 4 mediums.

• We still have PPC exposure targeting converting keyword phrases.
• We have tapped into our existing client base with a targeted campaign with products or services we know they consume.
• We have reached out to a larger market base with a targeted tactical flyer marketing campaign.
• We now are tapping into the largest marketing resource with the highest ROI available today, the internet using targeted SEO

Marketing is one area of the business that should not have it's budget cut but should be spent wiser and with maximum viability for success. SEO coupled with tactical media marketing is a very powerful marketing resource.