A search engine optimization service spends plenty of time getting a target audience to a site. However, if the relevant techniques are not used to address any issues on the pages of the site all the effort can come to very little. One of the main things which a SEO service must get correct is the homepage of a site. If this is not done properly then it is the case that users will not linger and are likely to get their wants and needs catered for elsewhere.

At searchengineoptimization.co.uk we are conscious of the fact that the homepage has several functions to perform. In addition, we are aware that a homepage which is not prepared correctly is not welcoming or helpful to users.

A reputable SEO service recognises that optimization is a complex, changing and ongoing process. Furthermore, it appreciates that a partnership approach may be required to make compromises between site design and how a site will be received by users and the search engines. It should be recalled that users, not search engines, make purchases from sites. Optimization should always cater for users in a target audience and avoid making common mistakes.

It is often the case that site owners who lack specialist assistance make errors in relation to their homepage. This means that they are wasting real opportunities for firm growth and may be detracting slightly from the image of the firm at the same time. A homepage has to welcome users, pass on information and help direct users towards what they are interested in. However, doing these tasks adequately is far from simple and many sites are let down by carelessness.

For example, many individuals simply put too much information on the homepage. Users welcome lots of blank space and like information to be conveyed in a concise form. Working out precisely what should feature on the homepage in terms of text content demands meticulous attention to detail. It is always best to make several preliminary drafts and so on.

Another problem is where a site owner puts too many images or videos on a homepage. Not only does this kind of thing threaten side loading times and make it harder to perform optimization techniques, but it also potentially makes it tricky for users to focus on the prompts which should be directing them to the information or products that they are after. It is always best to show moderation in the employment of videos or images on the whole of a site.

A further difficulty which sometimes crops up is where the text content on a homepage is simply too self-promotional. When a user gets onto a homepage they do not require a hard sell. They want to be given practical assistance so that they know what a firm is about. Furthermore, they desire to be given clear signs to where their various needs can be satisfied.

Homepages cannot be planned according to a formula because they have to reflect the individuality of the firm concerned. Nevertheless, if some common errors are made the likelihood is that valuable business will be lost.

There are a lot of SEO tools available on the net. Some of them are excellent. Some of them are less than useful. Along with the paid for, free, downloadable or on-site search engine optimization tools that you can use for your site, however, are some very basic tools that you may not realise that you have. What’s more, these are the tools that will do your SEO plan the most good.

People tend to jump straight for the technical wizardry available just because SEO is a technical field. It’s easy to forget that a large part of your site’s success with the search engines rests on your ability to communicate – not just to search engines, but to other human beings. There are very few search engine optimization tools on the net to help with this. Luckily, there are plenty of relevant SEO tools that you already have.

Tool 1: Your knowledge of your industry. It wouldn’t occur to most site owners that their own knowledge could be considered a valuable search engine optimization tool. With the amount of relevant content you need to produce, though, your knowledge can be an incredibly valuable thing. The best kind of content to feature on your site is content that has a strong topical link to your keywords.

Your knowledge of your industry will come in most handy when planning and assessing content. Even if you obtain the services of a professional writer, as many businesses do to keep up with content needs for SEO, you should take a hand in content planning. Using your familiarity with your industry can help you build attractive content and fill gaps your competitors are missing.

Tool 2: Your site, as it is. There is so much emphasis on changing a website during optimisation that there is a serious danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Unless you’ve done everything completely wrong, your site should have its own SEO strengths. These strengths can be used as tools for the rest of your search engine optimization campaign.

Tool 3: Your own sense of spelling and grammar. This can be a tricky topic for some people. A large percentage of the English-speaking population would say that their spelling and grammar probably isn’t up to scratch. Even when your own spelling and grammar isn’t that great, you’d be surprised what you pick up on. Most people subconsciously pick out flaws in written work, and this will help you when analysing your site’s content. If something doesn’t read right, don’t be afraid to question it. It will help your site maintain a professional level of content.

There are, of course, plenty of technical SEO tools that you can and should use for your optimisation. You can talk to us about the more valuable tools for your site at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk. However, the value of your site and your own skills should not be underestimated for SEO. In the end, you may find that these are the tools that are the most helpful.

Search engine optimization can seem a bit impenetrable to site owners. It is in part the inherent complexity of the evolving field of knowledge, but it is also the jargon-laden articles and the confusing acronyms which are responsible. Sometimes it seems that SEO services are talking to each other.

It is arguably the case that every SEO service has a duty to help clear up some of the mess. However, the pace of change in the ‘search world’ and conflicting interpretations of the changes means that clarifying matters is far from straightforward. Nevertheless, some aspects of search engine optimization do stay similar for considerable time periods. Users can crosscheck reputable sources to find out truths about these things. It thus makes sense to try to differentiate between those things which are relatively enduring and those which are fluid or have been transformed.

At Searchengineoptimization.co.uk we pursue focused and flexible campaigns which benefit the sites of our discriminating clients. We are determined to spread good practice by distributing reliable information with regard to UK SEO marketing.

Some things stay the same in the SEO game. One of these is that it pays to be on the right side of the ethical guidelines set by Google and the other major search engines. The guidelines may change over time, but adhering to them is less risky than breaching them. Breaking the rules can trigger a search engine penalty and lead to a site being suspended from the index. Furthermore, the users of a site rarely appreciate it when unethical techniques are used. This is because these black hat methods are all about impressing the search engines and do little for the experience of ordinary users. It is always easier to coax sales from individuals who are confident in a site’s probity. While some tactics may tread the vague line between ethical and unethical, these ‘in between’ grey hat approaches are often tempting fate.

There are all kinds of free SEO tools out there, just waiting for eager site owners to put them to use. Some of these are simpler than others, some more helpful than others. Some are sworn by, some are undiscovered gems. One absolute gem that isn’t often talked about is a code validation checker.

Code validation checkers are the unsung search engine optimisation tools heroes of the net. This is mostly because they are often the unused heroes of the net. If more sites bothered to validate their code, the internet would be a far more smooth-functioning place. The fact that it isn’t can be used to your advantage.

Why Does Code Need Validation?

As anyone who has worked with any HTML will know, code can be deceptively simple. A couple of characters here, a couple over there, and you can create a truly impressive page with all kinds of interesting elements. Unfortunately, all it takes is a couple of characters out of place for the whole thing to fall in a heap.

This is where code validation comes in. A validation checker runs through the code of a web page and highlights any problem areas. A good validation checker will tell you what kind of errors you have on your page, and give you a couple of warnings about what those errors can mean. The validator won’t provide a fix for your errors, though – there’s only so much you can expect from free SEO tools. The process of code validation is very simple, and the way it can help your site is simple as well.

Code validation is nothing new. The information technology industry has been using it for many years in order to test and check programs. Web designers and those otherwise involved in keeping the net operating have used it as well. Not a lot of site owners use validation checkers, though, which is why those sites that do can be at a significant advantage when it comes to the search engines.

How a Validation Checker Can Help Your Website

Code validation checkers are very useful search engine optimization tools because they encourage clear communication. It’s all about the way your site talks to the search engines. Think about it like a bad telephone line. If your site is talking to the search engines, but the static on the line means is getting in the way, this can mean that the search engines don’t understand what your message is. A simple, free check of your code, which will take mere seconds, can identify the problems you need to fix.

There are a number of great things about these kinds of SEO tools, the main one being that you can find validation checkers for free. Another great thing about validation checks is that the errors you correct could be impeding the way your site is shown on different browsers. In fixing your site’s code, and improving performance overall, you’re achieving far more for your site than a good place in the search engines.

What a gift it would be to see ourselves as others see us. Fortunately, it’s easier from an SEO perspective than it is in life outside the internet. Examining the way your website works from an SEO point of view is an extremely useful thing to do if you’re thinking of making improvements to try to get onto search engine results pages. Any good search engine optimisation company will provide a detailed and thorough service, but you might want to take a long hard look at the site yourself first. This will give you a good idea of where you might be going wrong, and what exactly you want an SEO agency to do for you.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s only publishers whose sites are obviously failing on the results pages that need to improve SEO. However successful your site is, there’s a very good chance it could be performing better given some optimization.

If you’re wondering what to look for when examining your site for flaws, don’t despair. We’ve put together a list of ways in which you can approach self assessment for SEO.

Have a Look at How You Currently Rank and for Which Keywords

Search for your product or service from all the big name search engines and see where you appear on results pages. If you rank well with one of them and not others, it’s a good idea to look at the criteria they have that’s different from the others.

Basically any information is useful. Make notes about keywords that are leading people to your site, and potential variations of the words preceding or following them. Thinking with SEO in mind means being open to new ideas and actively using your imagination.

Fresh SEO tools are there at your fingertips if you look closely and use your imagination. It is very likely that acting the part of a user finding your site will reveal ways in which you can improve.

Run Google Analytics for a Couple of Weeks

Don’t know what Google Analytics is? It’s a range of tools provided by Google to help you learn more about your place on the web. You can track visitors to your site and compile useful statistics. Running Google Analytics can give you an overview of the big picture, and show you where you’re succeeding and where you’re going wrong.

Read Your Content from a User Perspective

It’s well known that we often lose sight of the wood when surrounded by trees. In a similar way, you might be obsessed with the content on your site and still get it completely wrong. One of the best free SEO tools is fresh and original content. How sure are you that it’s a description of what you have on your pages? Take some time to access your site from a user perspective and read the material as if it were on another site. If it’s impossible to wear the shoes of an objective visitor, find one and study their reactions. You might be surprised by which things you thought were good actually receive a negative response, and vice versa.

Check Your Links

Think about your site with good link building in mind. How many of the links on your pages are unnecessary or irrelevant. Try to think like a user again, and follow the links to see if the sites they lead to are, in fact, any good. You might even find that some of them are no longer valid, and broken links make for a shoddy site.

And Finally, Get a Good Search Engine Optimisation Company to Do Most of the Work for You

Having taken a good look at your site and where you’re going wrong in SEO terms, don’t try to fix everything yourself. Bear in mind that without the necessary experience you could easily make things worse rather than better, by overfilling pages with new keywords for example.

Remember that good SEO is an investment in future prosperity, and that the returns on that investment can be better than you’d ever imagine. The internet reaches millions of people every day, and search engines are a powerful tool in bringing users to your pages. Without them acting as intermediary, showing the way to pages, you wouldn’t receive traffic and without it, no more business. Think big and shoot for the stars. You might be surprised how far you go!

The world of search engine optimisation has changed a lot over the years. There are still those who advocate tricking users into visiting their sites, but these days it really does seem like the good guy won. Search engines have become as intolerant as users of spamming methods. This is unsurprising given their dependence on keeping the public happy in world where users can as easily click to a different search engine as they can a site other than yours.

SEO is more complicated now than it’s ever been, what with advances in technology and the increasing volume of information available. In this world of advanced theory regarding SEO, it’s a very good idea to employ the services of a respected search engine optimisation company. The number of things to think about for good SEO can be daunting, and search engine optimisation services exist to take the pressure off. Even if you do employ a good SEO company, they won’t hold your hand forever, unless they truly do go the extra mile! We’ve provided a list of 15 things you should remember for SEO, and when we say to remember, we really mean it. No matter how well the SEO services you used have enhanced your site, you should maintain standards by keeping our advice in mind and acting upon it!

1. Think of SEO as something you do every day, like breakfast. To maintain high standards you’re going to need to put the effort into SEO.

2. Think about your company’s direction. Having clear goals in mind will help your marketing and that will help your optimisation. Every SEO company agrees that good marketing is good SEO.

3. Keep your guard up when it comes to unethical practices. It can be tempting to go for the easy option sometimes, even if you know it’s wrong. If you need some content fast, for example, it might seem wise just to take some that exists already on another site and put it on your own. Beware! Months or even years of hard work can be undone with one rash act.

4. Avoid JavaScript, frames, drop-down menus and Flash, and always use text. Don’t forget these basic principles of SEO.

5. Keep using keyword-focused tags as titles on your pages. Along with other activities the SEO company you hired probably implemented, keep doing what works.

6. Keep the content fresh, interesting and original. Remember that good marketing is good SEO and put effort into your content. If you take care of it, it will take care of you.

7. Use Analytics software such as Google Analytics to monitor your search engine results and performance. That way you’ll see if any area of your optimisation starts to slip.

8. Maintain the quality of links to and from your sitemap. If your software doesn’t automatically update then make sure that someone does it. You might remember why having a sitemap is important, now what’s important is keeping it accurate for a good user experience.

9. Keep linking to good sites and encouraging links from good sites. In short, remember your link building strategies!

10. Look for bigger and better links. Remember your strategies but move with the times. If you feel that some links are going to get you a lot of respect then go and get them if you can. Think about government and school sites.

11. Check links from your site as part of general maintenance. To keep high standards you should check regularly that links on your pages actually lead somewhere.

12. Monitor the Internet for good sites to link to. Uphold your reputation for excellence through providing users with appropriate and useful links that you’ve tested personally.

13. Stay involved in discussions. If part of your SEO was to get involved in forums, blog comments and social media, uphold the good work you started, remember that your SEO was not a one-time thing.

14. Think about a review of your SEO. The chances are that you’d benefit from using SEO experts more than once over a period of time to get ever-better results.

15. Let the good times roll! If you’ve experienced the financial gains you’d hoped for after optimising your site, why not put some of the money back into your company and your website by expanding? The Internet is, so why not you too? Think big and reach for the stars.

We hope you’ve found our short list helpful!

If you have a site that you’re ready to launch, the chances are that you’ve put a lot of effort into making it as useful, attractive and efficient as possible. If you’ve employed the services of a good search engine optimisation company the website will be ready and able to start handling a lot of traffic and bringing you all-important clients. But how much thought have you really put into your domain name? If you’ve been advised well by an SEO company and have also used a lot of common sense, then you’ve thought about it a great deal. The domain name is a critical part of the website when it comes to SEO. Changing it later could have a devastating impact on where you rank on the search engine results pages. Choosing is not a simple and straightforward process by any means, when so much depends on what you decide and so much needs to be taken into consideration.

Here are some tips on what you should think about carefully when choosing a domain name. It’s not comprehensive but we hope it will help those of you starting out.

1. Things to avoid. Here are some pitfalls to watch out for:

•    Don’t feature the same letter consecutively at the end of one word and the beginning of the next in your domain name. Think about the name ‘musicclass.com’, for example. If you chose this as a domain name you’d probably find yourself losing users to a site called ‘musiclass.com.’

•    You should avoid having a name that’s too long, for example – thisnamewon’tberememberedbymanypeople.com.

•    Do not take the easy route of choosing a title that’s similar to a successful one that exists already. Changing one letter or making your domain name virtually the same as one that exists invites legal action and makes you look cheap.

•    Avoid substituting letters for numbers. Having a domain name with numbers used instead of letters, for example 6eautiful.com, is unlikely to bring users to your website since few will have typed that into a query box.

•    Avoid ‘cutting up’ words to join them and create a made up word. ‘Classical Music Store’ transformed into ‘Clamust’ for example not only looks bad, but it will not bring you traffic.

2. Is it true that the domain has parasitical value? When SEO services advise you to think about parasitical value they’re telling you to think about your market as a pre-existing ‘pie’ you can claim a portion of through taking notice of queries from users. Look at the more obscure searches that are being conducted. If you can examine what’s being searched for already and steer your content toward catering for it, you’ll benefit. If you can provide useful information within your website’s general objectives, you’ll find that traffic is steered toward your site. With that comes an improvement in your ranking on results pages. It’s better to avoid terms which too many websites already compete for and it’s always useful to remember that good SEO means keeping your pages relevant.

3. Make it catchy. It’s very important to have a domain name that will stay in people’s minds. To this end it really needs to be relatively short, appropriate to your product or service and effective. Effective domain names are those that come to our minds as a direct association of a product or service. As an example of the benefits of choosing a catchy domain name, we might consider some of the potential benefits of social media marketing. If you want to get your site and content out into the public realm, there aren’t many better ways than employing some social media optimization techniques. To be an effective presence on websites such as Facebook and Twitter your brand needs to be instantly recognizable. The domain name should represent the identity of the product and act like an attractive door for users to pass through in order to get to you.

In conclusion, make sure you’re satisfied with your domain name before it’s made official. Remember, you could lose out by changing it after the website’s up and running. Make sure you’re happy with it and that it’s going to work well for you. Think of it as the sign above your door. Most shops want a polished sign and a steady stream of valued customers, and so do you! Make it one that will stand the test of time.

In order to lead internet publishers in the right direction in terms of accessibility and content, the big name search engines have all created services that help to guide webmasters. Each search engine provides different services and advice, but they’re all worth paying attention to. If nothing else, they give a valuable insight into what would be necessary to succeed in their eyes, and for that reason we’re going to advise you on how to approach their material.

Most good SEO services pay attention to the content of advice pages provided by search engines without falling into the trap of thinking they’re telling us everything we need to know. If nothing else, the search engines are providing you with free SEO tools and you should take advantage of that. We have to assume that the big name search engines know more than anyone about SEO link building, search engine optimisation tools and online SEO tools, it’s just that they’ve not been very free with the information until now.

We recommend that you take note of what they suggest you do, since they’re the ones you’re trying to please in order to reach your audience. There are some common themes in all the SEO literature provided by the search engines, and here are some points you should certainly address.

Good Practice

Feature sitemaps. All of the major search engines recommend that you feature a sitemap. A sitemap will enable users and search engines alike to navigate your site with ease. There are many different ways of creating a sitemap, and you should be aware of them and how your choice of which to use will affect your performance.

Choose a Format

XML is the format most often recommended. XML stands for Extensible Mark-up Language and it’s very easy for search engines to read sites that are created using XML. They have the disadvantage of featuring very large files which can prove to be a hindrance. RSS sitemaps can be read easily as well, and can easily be created to update automatically when fresh content is introduced to the site. They are harder to manage than XML sitemaps due to this updating process. Text based sitemaps may be the simplest version recommended by search engines. They do not allow as much scope for adding Meta tags, but there are benefits to keeping things simple. If all the search engines are telling you to have a sitemap, it would seem very foolish not to, especially given the fact that users like them. Our advice is to make one and to make it using one of the three methods here.

Get Technical

Use the text file provided for robots. The robots.txt file acts as a visitor’s guide for automated travellers to your site, and this means those sent by search engines to crawl the internet and send back information about what they find. This information is used to index your site, and it’s therefore crucial for SEO. It’s precisely these robot crawler programs that will be travelling along the links to and from your sitemap, for example. It’s a very wise idea to follow the advice of search engines to provide well for your visitors in these files. Use the commands at your disposal. The ‘disallow’ function ostensibly allows you to prevent robot crawlers from accessing specific pages or folders. This is important if you want to inform a search engine that duplicate text within your site is for printable versions, etc. It pays to remember that not all robots are good robots. Some are sent by unscrupulous web users to steal information. For this reason, you should be wary of what you include in your robots.txt file.

Conclusion

The three main services provided by the big name search engines are Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Center. It’s a very good idea to check them all out with a view to improving your search engine optimization. Learn about what they’re telling you to do in terms of what we’ve mentioned here, but bear in mind such common issues as backlinks, outbound links, keywords and feeds as well. Get advice from a good search engine optimisation company about ways of implementing the strategies they suggest without compromising your existing or planned SEO methods. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that search engines are generously giving you any information that will privilege your site above any others.

Keywords are one of the most powerful search engine optimisation tools at your disposal when it comes to getting where you want to be on the results pages. The words that users enter into query boxes really are the keys to doors that’ll lead them to your site. It’s because they’re so important that good keyword research is absolutely essential.

Someone with little or no experience of what constitutes good free SEO tools might ask why keyword research is necessary, since if you market mineral water, for example, ‘mineral’ and ‘water’ must be your keywords. What more is there to think about? Quite a lot, in fact.

If you’re one of the thousands of new or minor producers of mineral water, and by Minor we mean not ‘Evian’ or ‘Perrier’, using just mineral and water as keywords is unlikely to get you onto the top spots on results pages, since they’re already taken for those keywords by major players in the industry, who already have a reputation and popularity. It’s much better to be specific about your product, and to conceive of ways in which to market it effectively from an SEO perspective.

If the mineral water is sourced in the Highlands of Scotland, use those as keywords. If the water is high in a particular mineral that is particularly good for the cardiovascular system, then ‘heart’ might be a good keyword. In that way, someone typing ‘mineral water highlands Scotland heart’ might well find himself or herself at the door to your site.

The process of deciding on keywords is a complicated one, and involves careful consideration and much research. We’ve compiled six tips to help you to get the most out of your important keyword research.

1. Experiment with searching on your own. Find out which words are taking you where on the Internet. Try to get a feel for some keyword strategies that appear to have worked well for others. If you’re marketing mineral water, be exhaustive in searching for competitors and find out where they are ranking. Compile a list of the keywords used most often. This list will be a valuable tool when you decide which keywords to have for your site, and which you should forget.

2. Do some research into what keywords are already bringing users to your site. Assuming that you already have some kind of website up and running, which you are going to optimise, use Google Analytics to track the searches that are bringing you up on results pages. If you discover that as a small producer of mineral water your site is ranking on page 63 for the keywords ‘mineral’ and ‘water’ then you know where you are coming from. Data collected from Google Analytics can really help you to decide what keywords are going to work best for you. The information will also serve you well in charting progress you’ll make from SEO.

3. Research more obscure keywords for lengthier searches. It’s estimated that upwards of 70% of searches are from queries containing multiple keywords. Investigate which words are likely to feature before and after main keywords in searches, and include them on your pages where possible too. If you’re marketing mineral water and you feel your product has a calming effect for example, describe it as such for those people who might search using that word.

4. Don’t overuse keywords. With keywords there can be too much of a good thing. Search engines realized long ago that the method of judging a site’s relevance for users using keywords was being abused. For that reason featuring an over-abundance of keywords is likely to incur their wrath. Seek advice from professional SEO services about what’s enough and what’s too much, to be sure.

5. Remember that keywords are not the end of the story. Keep in mind that there’s a lot more to search engine optimisation than keywords and that although you’ll have made a great start with your research there are other SEO tools like links that need just as much attention.

6. Be ready to adapt to change. SEO is an ongoing process, and that applies to keywords as much as to anything else. Be ready for the market to change and for new opportunities with keywords to present themselves.

Consult an SEO agency with a proven track record for more advice on the latest methods of keyword research, and keep up to date with SEO developments online to get more information.

If you want internet users to return to your site, you need to know how to set yourself above the competition. In many industries, this involves a lot of hard work and creative energy. In a surprising number of industries, however, all it requires is a site that is more polished than theirs.

As any business owner knows, presentation counts for a lot. People have a basic trust of anyone who looks presentable. If you turn up to a meeting in a well-pressed suit, with your hair neatly brushed, and your competitor turns up with a stain on his tie, you’re already at an advantage. The same thing goes when it comes to your website.

If you’ve been reading about search engine optimisation then you’ve probably come across one or two articles on the importance of basic good housekeeping for your site. This means no broken links, a decent design, and correct spelling and grammar in your text. This should be a basic thing for any site, but thousands of sites simply can’t be bothered. If you’re already keeping your site spic and span, you’re in a good position. There is, however, another very basic thing that can help you to retain users once they’re on your site. It’s style.

Of course, having your own sense of style is important when you want to set yourself apart from your competitors, but that’s not the style we’re talking about here. It’s more about word style, a set of rules that you choose and conform to in your content.

Style Sheets and Publication

It’s probably never crossed most people’s minds, but the way different people use words varies enormously. Although in our culture just about everyone gets taught the rules of writing in their early years, the way this is taught, and the things that happen to us over the years, result in the development of an individual style. This can be a good thing, but for a website, where several people are composing content for search engine optimisation, it creates a big mess.

Every publication or publishing house has its own style guide. These are kind of writing rule books that set out what region of English is to be used, how things should look and even how punctuation is to be used. This ensures their style stays consistent.

Why is this important? Changes within text, even when they’re small, are irritating. Even tiny things, like switching from the English ‘Mum’ to the American ‘Mom’ between pages can put internet users off. This is because the small changes are subconsciously picked up, and the user’s brain tells them that there is an error somewhere. This can lead to users perceiving your site as unprofessional or badly composed. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about how correct content affects SEO.

Many publishers use existing style guides from other institutions and modify them for their needs. If you’re in charge of the content for your site, or if you’re considering developing content as part of your search engine optimisation, set yourself apart by maintaining a consistent style.