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.

It’s hard for a company that is new to SEO to be able to find reliable help. The technicalities of search engine optimisation are hard enough to wrap your head around. Learning how to interpret the small signs that indicate a reliable SEO company is very difficult.

When looking for a company to help you with the SEO of your site, don’t be afraid to ask pertinent questions. This will not only help you to figure out the quality of the company, but also see if they will suit the personality of your site. SEO can be a very individual process, and it’s important to pick a company that suits your site. You can discuss this with us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk. It’s also important to look for the following qualities.

*They publish lots of information on their site. A good search engine optimisation company will tend to feature a fair amount of information about SEO on their site. There are two reasons for this. First of all, most good SEO firms realise that their clients don’t have a lot of knowledge about optimisation. In educating them, the companies are preparing them for the work that needs to be done. The second reason has to do with optimisation itself. Lots of quality content helps the SEO of the SEO company’s site.

Think about it. Most SEO experts recommend that you feature plenty of fresh content on your site on a regular, ongoing basis. They also recommend that this content is of a certain quality, and that it should be on a topic that pleases your readers. Any smart optimisation expert is going to follow their own advice, which means that a company that features lots of top-quality content is basing the future success of their business on their own advice.

*They will be willing to answer questions. Luckily, the SEO industry is one in which the sharing of information is encouraged. Most SEO firms are more than willing to help you get a grip on what SEO is. Any firm that is unwilling to answer your questions before you sign on is very unusual in the industry and also probably not the firm for you.

No company has endless patience, and it’s not necessarily a bad sign if a company stops answering your questions and asks you to come in for a consultation. A search engine optimization company is just like any other business, and won’t give away all of their secrets. The difference should be that they are willing to answer basic questions as to how they operate, what their standards are, what you can expect and the generalities of SEO.

*They have a good reputation in the industry. One of the basic steps to take when researching SEO companies is to Google them. This helps you to see whether their methods are effective, and can also help you pick up on any negative reports out there. After this, it’s a good idea to check the industry forums for any mentions – good or bad – of the company.

Spam is something that everyone knows about but no-one can really define effectively. The actual example of spam will depend on what industry you’re in, and from what perspective you’re looking at it. The search engines have their own definition of spam, one which every site needs to become familiar with before they implement SEO.

Any site that pays absolute attention to the search engines’ rules will be in a bit of a fix when it comes to spam. The search engines have a very broad definition of unacceptable behaviour, one which is very difficult to conform to. Their basic rule is ‘don’t do anything you wouldn’t do if search engines didn’t exist,’ which is clearly naive. There are a lot of things that sites wouldn’t do if search engines didn’t exist – including the entirety of the book of SEO techniques – but which they have to do to survive on the net.

The search engines would prefer that no site perform any form of search engine optimisation. This is fair enough. The search engines ideally want unsullied results. They put up with the SEO industry, however, because SEO actually improves a site’s communication with the search engines. What this means is that while the search engines tell site owners to do nothing to their sites, what they really mean is don’t do anything completely underhanded.

The huge grey area of what is and is not acceptable to the search engines leaves a lot of room for error. The best path is to discover what search engine spam is, and find the solid examples of it that you should avoid.

Search engine spam is generally described as anything done to a site that deliberately manipulates. This is not really a great definition, because, as pointed out above, everything done during search engine optimisation is a manipulation of the search engines. Just as SEO has on-page and off-page components, search engine spam can be off- or on-page. Although there are large grey areas, the SEO industry is generally agreed on the things a site shouldn’t do. You can discuss this with us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk, but here are some of the things to watch out for:

On-page spam
*Keywords in miniscule or otherwise unreadable fonts
*Cloaking – placing keywords in the same colour as the background of the page to hide them
*Hiding keywords in the alt text
*Hiding keywords behind graphics
*Forwarding users through a doorway page which is saturated with keywords
*Hiding keywords within the page code

Off-page spam
*Being involved in a link farm, or exchanging links simply for the sake of boosting your link profile
*Filling a whole link profile with paid links
*Creating satellite sites to provide links to the central site

These are just some of the things that can get a site into real trouble with the search engines. There are plenty more areas that are full of danger for the unwary. Many SEO techniques are acceptable for the most part, but can be used in unacceptable ways. It’s best to consult a professional if you’re uncertain.

Lots of site owners forget all about their real audience when they SEO. This is a shame because not only are human internet users the people you ultimately have to please, failing to please your human audience can have a big and bad effect on search engine optimisation. If internet users click away from your site, the search engines take note.

It’s reasonable to question why internet users can have such a big part in a process that is all about the search engines. The techniques of SEO might be designed to grab the attention of the search engines, but that’s only part of the equation. Mixed in with the other factors of the algorithm are factors of user behaviour. If your site develops a history of putting internet users off, or if it fails to attract clicks from within the search pages, your ranking will ultimately go down. You and the search engines are really pursuing the same goal: an attractive, gripping, informative site that closely matches the search query.

This means that if you want your SEO to succeed, you have to study what your target audience wants. There are a few questions you need to ask during your initial research period.

1. What do you offer? This isn’t a philosophical question, but a practical one. What sort of product or service do you deal in? Ask yourself what searches your target audience will be using to find you. This is a question you need to ask even if your site doesn’t directly get profit from its topic, such as sites displaying paid advertising. This will give you your main keyword categories.

2. What search engines are your users used to? Although Google has the lion’s share of the search market, some groups of users habitually use other search engines. If your target market is one of these groups, optimising for Google is a waste of time. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about defining your target groups for search engine optimization.

3. What information do users want? Most internet searches are about finding information. You need to be able to predict the kind of information each keyword is a search for, and provide it in easy-to-find form on your landing pages. Without this, you risk having frustrated users bounce right back to the search engines.

4. What style is most comfortable? It’s a consideration not many websites seem to account for, but design is very important to retaining users. If your target user group is used to professional-looking sites, having a site that is a little avant garde in its design is not going to put them at their ease.

5. What content is the most enthralling? Different types of internet users will be attracted to different kinds of content. Some users prefer to read things in a blog or article, while some like things presented step-by-step. Your content should always be a little varied, to keep things interesting, but it’s important to know which format your target group will be comfortable with.

There is a lot that your home page has to accomplish when it comes to search engine optimisation. In fact, it needs to accomplish an awful lot, considering how small the space is that you have to work with. The home page is used as a kind of intersection and an introduction, an advertisement, an information desk and a news section all in one. A skilful home page can ensure you achieve the conversions you want; a ham-handed one will ensure that they go right back to the search engine results pages.

The danger is that you may expect your home page to do too much. A lot of home pages are too jam-packed with information for any individual item to be really understood. It’s hard for internet users to easily discover the information they need. This is exactly the opposite of what a good home page should be.

It seems like an impossible task to get your home page to do all you need it to do without making it too cluttered. It is indeed a hard task, but the key to a good home page is to keep things straightforward. This might mean some thinning out of information, and some simplification of other information. It also requires really well-thought-out design.

Good home page design requires thought

It can help to picture your home page as a front room for your business. If you fill any room with too much furniture, it not only looks cluttered, it becomes unusable. Similarly, if you fill up your home page with all of your products and services, internet users won’t be able to use it.

A lot of your ideas for your home page will come from its design. Consider the physical limitations of any home page: a computer screen. Many home pages extend beyond this first screen, but anything an internet user has to scroll down for will not get as much attention. It’s important to fit everything essential in that rough few square inches worth of space.

It’s a good idea to think about home pages that have appealed to you personally, and to look at the home pages of the successful sites in your industry. Different industries do tend to develop certain stylistic traits, which are usually worthwhile paying attention to. This can provide you with a good guide for the number of products or services you can comfortably fit on your home page as well.

It should go without saying that your home page will be one of the most important pages for your site’s search engine optimisation. Happily, a home page is usually one of the easier pages to optimise, as keywords tend to fit in more easily than content-heavy pages. You can discuss home page SEO with us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk.

The main thing to keep in mind for home page optimisation is to keep things simple. It will be tempting to crowd your home page with all of the information you need to tell your users. Resist this urge and your home page should work out well.

Customer loyalty is an old-fashioned term to apply to the net. Not very many businesses seem to think of it. Some may think in terms of return traffic or repeat custom, but only very rarely do businesses focus on ways to make their customers loyal to them.

Loyalty is something that can have a major impact on your site’s search engine optimization. This is one area that many sites overlook when performing their optimisation, thinking that return traffic can’t really do much for them. This always proves to be a big mistake. Ignore the needs of your site’s users, and your ranking will eventually go down.

When you’re working on your search engine optimisation plan, it’s all too easy to focus only on your business needs. After all, you’re undergoing massive amounts of work to benefit your business. The unfortunate outcome of this is often that a site’s loyal users get left behind. Content becomes more about keywords than communication.

Not every site has loyal users, but every site should want them. Even if your business doesn’t rely on repeat custom, your website can benefit from it. Return traffic can boost your SEO, as the search engines tend to take it as a good sign. If your site fails to draw repeat visits, bounces users back to the search pages or fails to keep users on pages for long enough, the search engines could give it a bad ranking. This is a fairly serious consequence for failing to keep users happy.

Obtaining repeat traffic is not an easy thing, but there are things you can do to nurture loyalty in your site’s visitors. Good content is the basic requirement for this. As part of your search engine optimisation plan, you should be planning to provide your site with a source of constant, quality, fresh content, and it’s best to make this content relevant to your visitors. Creating a sense of community on your site is another way to encourage internet users to return, as is publicly replying to customer queries on the site.

When it comes to repeat traffic, the primary thing to keep in mind is value. If a site is valuable to your users, they will return. This doesn’t mean monetary value. In fact, sites that try to lure repeat traffic through offering things that are of financial benefit usually find their schemes backfiring in distrust. When it comes to the internet, the sort of value you need to think about is the quality of information you offer, its usefulness and the way that you offer it. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about information and your site’s content.

The technical nature of SEO can mean that site owners get bogged down in detail. This can be damaging to the general health of the site. Even optimisation professionals can be occasionally guilty of this. It is important, however, to take the time every now and then to stand back and look at your site from a user perspective. This can result in a better-rounded, profitable site.

Text is a big feature on any web page. Despite significant technological advances, we haven’t really moved that far from text on the internet. When you’re involved in search engine optimisation, you simply can’t get away from text, as this is the most effective medium for communicating with the search engines.

Just about every SEO technique involves manipulation of text. Frequent content updates, hyperlinks, even optimised URLs are all about using words to catch the attention of search engine spiders. Not only is SEO firmly seated in text, but that text has to be the standard form for the culture your site is based in. In the case of Western sites, that means the English language.

Standard English is not that easy for some to get their head around. Everyone has had a bad experience with the English language at one time or another. Not many people remember their grammar teacher with fondness. English is full of rules that seem to be nonsensical, and a lot of them are damnably difficult to remember when you’re writing.

They’re not that difficult when you’re reading. In fact, they’re pretty much subconscious.

Reading Zen: Grammar is Subconscious

Grammatical errors stand out sharply to someone reading your text. Most people pick up on grammatical errors because they feel that something in the text is just a little off. Although they might not be able to pinpoint exactly what’s wrong, they will be left with a feeling that the writing is below standard. This is not the impression that any business site owner wants to leave site users with.

Grammar is important for search engine optimisation simply because it is important to people. Most people will say they do not care about grammar, but deep down, they do. Proper grammar tells us that the piece we’re reading was written by someone who is able to communicate effectively, who has paid attention to the rules of communication and is telling us what they mean. Bad grammar, like it or not, gives an impression of non-professionalism.

Good grammar projects a professional image. This is what sets successful sites apart from less-than-successful ones. If your site doesn’t project professionalism on par with your competitors, you can wave your customers goodbye. You can also say goodbye to your desired ranking, as bounce rates and time-on-page statistics have an influence over the rankings calculation. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about ranking factors.

Grammar Rules are There for a Reason

The final reason to ensure that your SEO content sticks to the rules of grammar is that grammar rules ensure that ideas are communicated effectively. How many times have you come across a badly written sentence and been unable to work out its meaning? The rules of English are there to ensure that when a sentence is written down, it will mean the same thing to anyone reading it. Good grammar is an investment in ensuring your site’s users receive your message.

It’s true of any form of marketing that a broader range of campaign will get you more coverage. If you are running a stall at an exhibition, having two tables is going to allow you to see more people than just having one. Running an advertisement for one week won’t be as effective as running it for two. Multiplicity gives you a broader range.

The same is true of SEO. Some businesses base their search engine optimization campaigns around one set of keywords, often for just one page. This gives the campaign a very narrow focus.

Although there’s plenty of debate in almost every other area of SEO, most SEO professionals will agree that keyword research is central to the success of a good search engine optimization campaign. It’s only logical. People use many different words to describe individual concepts, and individual businesses may not be aware of the range of words their target group uses.

Once keyword research is over, it’s almost always necessary to cut down the range of keywords for the search engine optimization campaign. This will be done according to the level of competition the business wants to engage in, and the range of keywords they would like to cover. You can discuss with us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk the process of choosing a keyword list. Often, however, businesses cut the list down too far.

Using a small range of keywords severely limits the scope of your SEO. Think about it: how often are you satisfied with just one search on a topic? Studies have shown that most internet users use a range of keywords when researching a particular area, using small changes to narrow down the field until they find just the right site. Internet users are increasingly using this method of search even when the first list produced contains some relevant sites. It’s a case of cross-referencing being used to determine which pages are truly the most relevant. If your site only appears for one of these searches, your chances of being picked are quite small.

Your choice of keywords will be necessarily limited by the amount of time and budget you can devote to the SEO process. It is important, however, to remember that search engine optimization is a long-term thing. The keywords you choose could be with you for a long time. Almost certainly you will want the room to add more keywords as time goes on. It’s vital to keep an open mind and to keep the future in mind when you’re first planning your initial optimisation.

The search industry is getting more and more competitive as more businesses get online. Today’s SEO strategies have to be sophisticated and cunning, taking predictions of future market behaviour into account. Only in using a large number of keywords can you hope to compete. By using the keywords central to your business, as well as the ones used by your competitors, and throwing a few user terms into the mix, you’re covering all of your bases.

Maybe you’ve done some search engine optimisation, you’ve got your site polished up and it’s ready to roll. In your initial tests though, you’re finding that for some reason people seem to prefer your competitors. In fact, when you take a look at the two sites, even you can see that there’s something about your competitors that gives them an edge.

Sites that are similar in almost every way can still give very different impressions, and often it’s the smallest things that make this difference. Your search engine optimisation campaign should be able to give you the edge over your competitors, but you can’t always count on internet users clicking on the site that’s at the top of the listings. If your competitors are in the top ten, they’re still tough competition, and it’s up to your site itself to secure the victory.

There are countless little things that count toward the impression your site gives. Your choice of colours in your design, the font you’ve chosen, the amount of space around the text and the images you use; they all work together to give the internet user a certain impression. Often, your industry will provide a good standard that will level out the playing field somewhat. When this happens, and when your site looks pretty much the same as everyone else’s, even smaller things will count. Here are a few:

*Regional spelling: The region of spelling is often overlooked as a matter of style. If your site serves only one region, it’s important that you maintain a standard of English suitable to that region. There’s a lot of hidden snobbery about English. Many internet users get irritated when confronted with what they consider ‘foreign’ spelling.

Regional spelling isn’t a simple matter. If your website serves a number of international regions, you’re marketing to a variety of versions of English. Even if you serve only one country, it’s likely that you’ll have to swap the odd letter in order to get the right variety of keywords in for your search engine optimisation. SEO companies, for example, often have to slip in the odd ’search engine optimization’ to reach the right customers. This can get annoying if the spellings are altered within the same piece of text. Try to keep different regions separate if you can.

*Word styles: Another thing that is often overlooked, and at the same time very simple, is word styles. Do you say ‘no one’ or ‘no-one’? Is it ‘website’, ‘web site’ or ‘web-site’? What you may consider standard could be very different to your employees’ standard. It can be a good idea to set up a style sheet and give it to each person that contributes content to your site. This can be handy if you’re sourcing content from your SEO company as well, and you can talk to us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk about content provision.

*Punctuation: Most people would think that punctuation is a standard thing, but it’s not. Little things like hyphens, which can be – or -, and keeping commas inside or outside quote marks, should be part of your style choice.

There are many tools you can use to help make your website better, but few of those tools are more effective than learning how to use a simple but effective strategy. SEO is not only affordable, it is also one of the best ways that you can easily improve the website that you have and the business that you can do online. When you are able to market the website to different groups of people, you are able to create more contacts online and also find the customers that you need. SEO can be a great way for you to see the improvements you need for your business and allow you the ability to market your products.

Use SEO with Content on the Website
Create content – when you are going to create content for the website, you need to find information that is related to what your business is. You also need to add in as much content as you can that is interesting and will give your readers something to enjoy while they are on your website. Content can be in articles, blogs or other features that you can have on your website and allow your customers to learn more about the business you have online.

Find More Markets with SEO
Find Markets – finding the markets of people you need to reach is also important. You need to be able to find people online that are going to be interested in buying your products and going to your website to learn more about what you do. You can find markets by knowing where your customers are online, what they are interested in and what they are going to be searching for.

Use SEO to Create More Links
Create links to your website. Links are a way to market the website and your business and they are easy to create. You can create links to anything that you have on the website including content and articles or blogs. Once you have the content created, you can use that to post links to other websites online that will allow people to see your website.

Use SEO as a Marketing Tool
Market through SEO – learning about SEO and how you can market your website with it takes some time but, if you invest the time into learning how it works, you will be able to see it give you the success that you need. SEO can be used in the keywords that you choose, the content that you write and the links that you create. Find other websites that are similar to yours and see how they are using the SEO. You can also search for resources online that can help you learn more about it as a marketing tool.

Find the Right Tools and Keywords
Choose keywords – keywords are necessary for you to create a website that more people will see and that you can use to build a business. You can create the list of keywords based on the products that you have and the content that you are writing. The keywords that you choose should be related to the website and they should also be performing well in the search engines.

Add tools to your website that can help you interact with your customers and provide a good place for your readers to post any feedback or comments that they have for you.  If you need to find the kinds of features that are available, you can go online and find them. There are SEO tools available that will help you build your website and that you can use in tracking the ads and links that you place. You can find a number of free or affordable tools that you can use to monitor how each of the links are doing that you have placed online.

Find More Groups to Join Online
Join groups online to help get more contacts and to help find the markets that you are trying to reach.  Find other groups of professionals that have a similar business to yours and see if you are able to join them. You can find more customers and create a better marketing strategy for your website when you are approaching websites to post links on. There are a number of groups that you can join to be able to reach more customers online.