Social Media

Are quality keywords alone sufficient for good search engine placement?

March 13, 2014

Search engine performance has always been a predominant part of the specification of most website projects, even before Google had reached the consciousness of the masses; a time when Yahoo was the ascendant search engine.

 

Is good keyword selection important? Absolutely yes, however it’s the start of your optimisation journey, not the end. We frequently come across website owners who have commissioned an excellent website for their business; all the keywords are in place, the navigation is intuitive and the calls to action expertly implemented, but it just not drawing either the traffic or the business despite the serious cash injection. Sitting around for the return on investment could be a long wait.

 

Assuming you have professionally researched the keywords and they are correct for your marketing message then you’re ready to start the search engine marketing and monitoring. This is a basket of activities that will turn your website from a cobweb to a proactive marketing tool; a sales team ready to close new business.

 

The online marketing part of the process is primarily aimed at increasing your inbound referrers – the external links to your site. Apart from other search engines and directories, the world of social media offers a vast number of channels where this can be done to great effect with minimal cost and a small amount of dedicated time applied regularly on a weekly schedule.  Assuming your overall objective is to build business and drive people to the calls to action in your website, then the focus needs to be to deliver new people to the website. The social media will allow them to get to know you and see peer recommendations. Ultimately it will deliver them to your website where the convincers and calls to action should deliver you the new business you wanted.

 

The great thing about this is these potential customers arrive at your website voluntarily from peer recommendations, all orchestrated without the loth’able sales emails or other pushy sales techniques.

The monitoring part of the process is to ensure that you keep your nose clean and obey all the rules that make for a quality web presence rather than something that just looks good, but is effectively lame. Spotting build code errors is important as the Google spider may baulk at code it doesn’t understand and therefore stops indexing your site. You don’t want that as you’ll be largely invisible in Google searches. There are a raft of other crucial items to monitor and an ongoing marketing and monitoring program will do this, ensuring a site is truly “fully search engine optimised”.

 

Once other people like your site and link to it using relevant keywords then your site will start to gain prominence. Better still if they are very relevant referrers in the same field as yours; then the Google “love” increases ever more.

 

It’s far from rocket science; develop a good website that is relevant to your message and appealing to both people and Google, get liked by other quality online referrers, feed the referral channels to keep the whole marketing machine oiled with new posts that link back to the website and encourage relevant others to link to you.

 

If you do it well your market will respond, but just play with it and you’ll be joining the masses who tried and failed to maximise their potential and return on investment.

 

In answer to the question “Are quality keywords alone sufficient for good search engine placement“, the answer is a resounding “no”. They are however the crucial start to the foundation of your website and online marketing.

 

About the Author

Simon Thomas of Toucan Internet LLP has been involved in the development hosting and marketing of websites since 1995. He is passionate about his client’s online success and will welcome any approach for web development or consultative engagements.

t: 01279 871 694

e: simon@toucanweb.co.uk

w: www.toucanweb.co.uk

 

Copyright Toucan Internet LLP 2014©. All rights reserved.

Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media

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Are your SEO practices in line with Google Hummingbird?

February 5, 2014

Hummingbird, Google’s search algorithm overhaul

Customers earnest about getting and maintaining a quality online success have consistently invested time and effort in selecting the right keywords for their website and inbound marketing channels. Why? Because Google will recognise these and will index your site accordingly; done well and consistently, Google will give your site the rewards you seek with higher search engine results positions.

If you thought you’d grasped what needed to be done, Google changes the rules and in flies Hummingbird. It’s probably the most significant change to Google’s search rules in 13 years, reportedly affecting a massive 90% of all searches. Now it’s more important than ever that you have quality inbound organic referrers to your website, i.e. visitors referred to your site by other websites.

The Hummingbird change means that searches are now totally secure, suggesting that keyword analytics data could well be a thing of the past! Basically Google has switched all of its searches over to encrypted searches using HTTPS. This means no more keyword data will be passed to site owners and website owners will no longer have the ability to track users by their keyword searches.  Other search engines will still send keyword data through to help with your analytics and keyword development.

The exact way the Hummingbird algorithm works is not 100% clear, however it appears Hummingbird looks at over 200 different components when determining the search rank for a site much like previous releases.  However previously Google would focus on the specific keywords where as now, with Hummingbird, the focus is on the context of the words entered and the matching of that meaning to web pages to which it relates; web pages matching the meaning do better than pages matching just a few keywords. This is a good thing overall and will kill the trend of content writers damaging the copy of their content trying to achieve “the right level” of keyword stuffing.

What is clear is that if you are to maintain leading positions in Google search engine results your emphasis now needs to shift to the breadth of your website and to answering of specific questions for your audience. As has always been advocated by search engine marketing professionals, quality content remains key, it is that that your customers have and will continue to want to see irrespective of Hummingbird, but now the more the content aligns with answering specific customer questions, the more likely your page positions will prosper under Google Hummingbird.

In short, the new Hummingbird algorithm is trying to measure the quality and how valuable and helpful your website is in answering customers’ questions. The key is therefore having as many unique entrance pages on your website as possible offering breadth, help and expertise on many relevant topics, plus of course relevant peer backlinks.

So how do you grow the number and breadth of entrance pages? One answer could be simply by adding new content regularly to both your website and blog. The need for a blog becomes even greater if you don’t already operate one on your site. The more energy you place into the content on your site the higher you are likely to appear on Google search. It is clear that Google wants useful and relevant content to be king, and any future changes to its algorithms are likely to reflect this also. This may require many companies to examine their content strategies and look at how they can use as many forms of content to maintain the desired energy and diversity (e.g. Videos, PPC promotion of best content, info-graphics, re-blog on industry hot stories, etc.)

Are your SEO practices in line with Hummingbird? If you review your Google Analytics since Hummingbird was introduced in late August you will be able to see if there has been any decline in your website visitors. However, if you are to maintain and improve your search position you will need to reflect upon your whole online content strategy and the links to your site/content both on site and backlinks from other website and your inbound marketing from your social media. Make sure you focus on growing the number of relevant links and the quality, breadth, depth, frequency and value of your content if you are to maintain and improve your search position.

About the Author.

This article was written by Simon Thomas of Toucan Internet LLP, developing high performance websites on the Internet since 1995.  Passionate about his clients’ success, you’re invited to get in touch to see if you too could benefit:

For more information.
t: 01279 871 694
e: simon@toucanweb.co.uk

w: www.toucanweb.co.uk

 

Copyright Toucan Internet LLP 2014©. All rights reserved.

Business Wisdom, Social Media, Web

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Have your social media managed and content provided.

April 16, 2013

Online Word of mouth marketing with peer recommendations – Toucan Internet Social Media

We all know that one of the most effective forms of marketing is via word of mouth.  Well, in the last few years with the advent of ‘social media’, word of mouth has gone digital.  You can’t go far today without coming across a web address, QR code, an email, a blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Youtube and a whole host of other digital formats.

The challenge that today’s business owners face is being able to use these formats effectively and to their advantage.  There are a multitude of different ‘channels’ and the majority have the ability to be tremendously advantageous for your business.

What cannot be questioned is the value of participating in some form of social networking or marketing.  Simply put, in this digital age; appropriate digital interaction is a must if the business is to thrive.  It doesn’t matter if you’re B2B or B2C, these channels can offer significant value to your business and should be ignored at your peril.

At Toucan Internet LLP we offer a bespoke social media service. We have a diverse range of clients participating in a diverse range of activities and this allows us to truly appreciate that there quite simply is not just one global solution for everyone.  Consequently we offer a range of social media solutions that can be tailored specifically to your varied requirements, expectations and budget, as well as being designed specifically with your target audience in mind.

What we do

Whatever stage your business is at, Toucan can help.  Whether you are looking to build an entire online presence from scratch and see social media as an important branch of that; or you are looking to add social media to what you are already implementing; we can work with you to help you achieve your goals.

If you already possess a digital presence and ideas regarding your marketing focus, we can work with you in deciding how best to grow your online presence and social media activity, whilst maintaining everything that your company and brand stands for.  We understand the importance of a homogenous digital presence and consequently we believe that everything published must be in line with your business goals and character in order that your business reputation is only enhanced.

In terms of the differing channels we can offer you; Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are good places to start, whilst Google+ is also emerging as one of the key players in social media marketing.  If you are looking to share lengthier news items or other information, then a blog is a perfect place to showcase these and this can also be implemented by us at Toucan.

The programme

We understand that there will be differing levels of expectation, and it’s important to set your ambitions in line with your ability to manage this new marketing.  Regular and worthwhile posts are integral to the success of this kind of marketing and this is where Toucan can help you to achieve your goals.  We can take a brief from you and use it to create a bespoke programme for you.

After ascertaining precisely what you require, we can set up a schedule for each social media platform in order to maximize your online presence.  This can be done with a varied level of input from you; we can either source the content from you, or you can commission us to research and garner relevant content.  We also offer an interactive service whereby we will respond to your followers on the various platforms in order to encourage positive social media interaction and increase your profile on the world wide web.

The value to you is that Toucan take this on for you and run it to your brief and budget.

  • You are safe in the knowledge that your social media engagement is being professionally managed
  • You are free to run your business and interact with your social media program only when you want

 

 

About the Author.

This article was written by Simon Thomas of Toucan Internet LLP who has been active on the Internet since 1995 and runs a number of commercially successful Internet projects. Toucan supports client’s bespoke web development with online marketing and hosting services, and other components that make for high value high performance websites.

For more information.

t: 01279 871 694
e: simon@toucanweb.co.uk
w: www.toucanweb.co.uk
fb: http://www.facebook.com/ToucanInternet
tw: https://twitter.com/Toucan_Group

Copyright Toucan Internet LLP 2013©. All rights reserved.

 

Business Wisdom, Social Media

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