Google hates sites that stagnate and have the same old content that Google’s spiders have already crawled. What is Google’s main purpose? If you think about it logically, Google and the other search engines were created to be able to supply the user with the most accurate, interesting and current information for the search query that is used in the Search Engines.

This means that if your site becomes stagnant (content wise) and you have only your old outdated content on the site, Google and other search engines will not necessarily keep crawling your site. Adding new content to your site often ensures that SE spiders will know that they have to crawl and index your content regularly.

The more content you have on your site, the more industry related information you will have. Consequently, the more industry information you have, the more opportunity you will get to include your industry keywords in this SEO content. As a result, the more industry keywords you have in your content, the more keywords you will rank for in Google. It makes sense for overall SEO, doesn’t it.

Remember how I referred to ‘fresh’ and ‘unique’ content the whole time up there? This is a very important point to keep in mind when adding content to your site. Many site owners use the internet to keep tabs on industry news and they read up on what’s new in their industry. This is very important and will help you to keep abreast of any industry related advancements. Where many site owners make a massive mistake though, is to take this news or information and add it to their websites verbatim.

This is not a good idea!

Google has put in place something called the ‘duplicate content penalty’. This duplicate content penalty will not be used to ban your site altogether from Google; in most cases anyway. The way the duplicate penalty works in the instance of copying and pasting content from other sites is like this:
Once content has been published to the internet on whatever site, Google and the other SE’s will crawl this content and index it. Now, when you take this content from the site and place it word for word on your own site, there will now be two pages of the exact same content. Firstly, having two pages of the exact same content is of no use to anyone. Secondly, the content that was copied and pasted will be crawled by the SE spiders and it will be compared to the content already existing in the SE’s index. Once the SE sees that this content already exists elsewhere, it will ignore this content and you will probably have a hard time ranking well for the keywords and phrases used in this content.

What a waste of a page right?

Now there are many discussions on how often a site’s content should be updated, but many are of the opinion that as long as the site is being updated on a regular basis, it should be fine. This means that you can add new content to your site once a week, once a month or even once every three months, as long as it is done consistently. This way the SE spiders will know that they need to visit your site in these chosen intervals. It is of course better to have SE spiders visit your site every week rather than once every three months.

There is a very good way to make sure that your site is updated regularly – get a company Blog! Google loves blogs! Why you ask? Remember what Google’s main goal is? A blog is updated very regularly with entirely unique content; this is what Google craves.

So there you have it, update that site of yours with fresh and unique content at regular intervals. Don’t ‘scrape’ existing content from other web pages and add it to your own site. Even better, create a company blog that lives on your site’s URL and get everyone in the company to write a piece on their specific expertise within the company.

In truth there is no specific level of importance in SEO. While link building is an important factor, so is correct keyword research and keyword placement, as is optimizing meta-data description tags. Performing these tasks may take different lengths of time, but this doesn’t mean that since one SEO task takes longer than another that it is more important.

A good illustrative example would be the comparison between link-building and the optimizing of meta-data tags. Link-building is a time-consuming and  continuously ongoing task. It can take hours or even days to build a good solid basis of links directing towards your site. Once you have that basis of links it sets a firm platform from which to continuously build links over the lifetime of your site. On the other hand, optimizing meta-data on your site is a relatively quick process – it can take you a few hours to do your entire site depending on the size thereof. The optimization of meta-data includes, but is not limited to:
•    Placing valuable keywords in the keyword tags
•    Making your keyword tags punchy, to the point and keyword rich

While this may be a relatively short process in comparison to link-building it is by no means less important.

SEO on a site is very similar to the parts of a car engine. Every part is important in relation to how well the engine functions. If one part isn’t optimized and tuned correctly it will affect the overall performance of the engine!

So, next time you want to ask about SEO or if you want an SEO tip, try and think about all the areas that the SEO process comprises and redefine your question to a specific area. This will ensure that you get the specific information you require the first time around.

Copywriting for the web is an entirely different beast to copywriting for print media. The balance between pleasing your audience and the hidden search engine spiders (more on this later) is initially, incredibly tricky but grows to become second nature once you have discovered the skills of this trade. It is not an easy road to follow, but for any decent writer it remains a lofty challenge and a goal worth pursuing. This takes practice, endless months of practice repeating the same techniques again and again until they become second nature. So what is SEO copywriting exactly? It is a finely tuned skill which few can correctly apply to their work.

Copywriting begins with a few straightforward techniques which anyone can apply to their content in order to enhance their overall web presence.

• Know your target audience

The client will often dictate the tone which they require from your content. If your content is for ‘Car Rental’ then a thorough knowledge of rental cars is essential. If you write needless paragraphs which idle on about unnecessary information which is difficult to sift through, then your audience will instantly become disinterested and even abandon the site altogether. A good copywriter writes for both their intended audience and their client. A hard line to walk indeed.

• Stick to the SEO guidelines

This point is canon, unless you intend to keep your work hidden amongst the sea of other top ranking pages. SEO is search engine optimisation and without it, my copy would never reach the lofty heights of Google ranking number one, two or three. Keywords pertaining to the site (such as ‘top car rental’ or ‘best car hire’) are thoroughly researched and then strategically placed into my copy. This rockets any work straight into the top tiers. There are countless SEO hints and tips on the web which you can locate and implement into your work.

• Keep it readable

If your copy reads like a fifth graders essay about his holiday in Mykonos, then perhaps it’s time to take your work back to the drawing board. Stuffing in keywords for the sake of a better ranking in the major search engines is poor SEO copywriting and a guarantee that your work will never see a number one ranking. Inject your own unique personality into all of your work; this includes correct paragraph and sentence structure as well. You are writing for human beings, not the computer. Always keep this in mind.

Copywriting is more than a job; it is my life’s ambition and a skill which I will continue to fine-tune for the remainder of my days. Good luck for those who wish to develop their own writing skills. Be proud of your work and everything else will fall into place.

At ROI, we have created an Onsite SEO Checklist to ensure that all elements will be implemented when working on our client’s sites.

A checklist like this is invaluable when benchmarking the SEO status of a website.  By using an onsite SEO checklist in this manner, one can see exactly which elements are not present and what steps need to be taken in order to implement them.  Listed below are a few of the most important elements which should be implemented for SEO compliance.

1.    URL’s – All URL’s should be in directory-type format. Some examples of a good URL structure are: http://www.partyclothes.com/costumes/witches.
Example of Bad URL Structure: hhtp://www.parties.com/hats_ee02860pd

2.    Meta Tags – Keyword density and proximity are two very important factors to take into consideration when populating your Meta tags.

3.    Meta Keywords – Before deciding on the most appropriate Industry specific keywords, extensive keyword research need to be done for every page of the site. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to keyword spam in the Meta tag.

4.    Meta Titles – These titles found in the browser window, are regarded by many as the most important onsite element to be optimised.  Short and to the point should be the rule when creating your Title tags.

5.    Meta Description – The Meta description can be seen as the summary of the page. This is the text that will show up in the search engine results beneath your sites title. As you may have noticed, Google for example, only displays a limited amount of text.  The length of the description should be around 160 characters and this includes spaces. This description is primarily used for users to be able to know what your site or page is about, so it’s worth writing a good description. If a browser views your site in the results and you have a relevant and concise description of your site, the chances are high that the user will click through to your site.

6.    Image Alt Tags – Spiders can’t read images or graphics. For this reason, all images used should be tagged with a short description of the image using Alt tags. The Alt tag should make sense and accurately describe your image.

7.    Internal Linking – Internal Links are the links pointing to and from the other pages of your site. Users find their way around your site either through the navigational tabs or through internal links in the content of the page. Anchor text within the content should be used to point the user in the direction of a page with further information. In essence, the keyword used as anchor text will serve the purpose of telling the user what information this link leads to. For example, the anchor text “SEO should lead to a page on your site containing more information on SEO.
Internal linking has another purpose. Spiders also use links as the “doorways” to the next page and if there isn’t any way for the spiders to navigate through your site, the site will not be correctly spidered in its entirety.

8.    WWW and non-WWW domains – Many developers make the mistake of keeping their sites live on both the www and non-www domain. For example, your site is live on http://www.domain.com and the same site is also live on http://domain.com.
This is something that should altogether be avoided, as this will represent an exact replica of your site.  Google does not appreciate duplicated content. You might not get penalized through rankings, but you are losing power by having more than one of the same site.

9.    Sitemaps – There are two kinds of sitemaps. Firstly, you have the static sitemap, which is a graphical representation of the architecture of the site. The static sitemap is for the users to be able to browse and explore the site easily. Then we have the XML Sitemap. This sitemap is not visible to the user and is used by Google to crawl the site effectively. The advantage of uploading a XML Sitemap is that Google will be able to crawl all URL’s of the site even if the internal linking structure isn’t up to scratch.

10.    Graphical Text – Many developers use graphics above the fold. The problem with this is that the text used in the graphic is more often than not also graphical text.  As mentioned above, spiders are unable to read images, so the text in the graphical image will not be spidered and indexed.

11.    Site Tracking – Google provides webmasters with fantastic free tools, such as Analytics and Webmaster Tools, to track the progress of your site and also to view any problems with your site i.e. 404 error pages that need to be fixed.  Create an account immediately and make use of these tools.

12.    Robots.txt – When a search engine crawler comes to your site, it will look for a special file, which is also usually located on your site. That file is called robots.txt and it tells the search engine spider which webpage’s of your site should be indexed and which webpage’s should be ignored. There may be some information that you do not want indexed in the Search Engines, for this purpose you should utilize your Robots.txt file.

And last, but definitely not least…

13.    Content – The content on your site is of utmost importance! Information is the driving factor behind all of us who use the web. Content can be the one element that will drive your rankings up in all Search Engines. The main purpose of Google is to provide the most relevant and reliable information to the user, based on the queries they use to search. This is why the smart people at Google spend so much time perfecting their search results. It’s all about the content!
Always create unique and relevant information for your site and make sure that there is plenty of it!

So there you have it, ensure that these elements are implemented when creating onsite SEO for a site this is a great start for achieving those top rankings.

The reality is that the majority of online companies allocate the largest part of their budgets towards Pay per Click advertising campaigns. In the US, paid advertising is expected to grow by 15% in 2009 – reaching $12 billion. Some companies spend up to $60 000 a month on PPC advertising costs and hardly anything on Search Engine Optimization.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with paid advertising; it allows you to get instantaneous traffic from your desired target market, you can pick how much you want to spend per day/month/year and is guaranteed to improve overall ROI. Additionally, when it comes to SEO, it can take anywhere between one and 12 months to achieve top rankings in the organic results.

When it comes to which approach is better, one can argue that SEO is a far more superior long-term strategy. The advantages of Search Engine Optimization include:

• No direct marketing costs when your company’s advertisements get clicked.

• Targeting at least 80% of the Search Engine market.

• When your site ranks well you are pretty much up there all of the time which means that your long-term marketing costs decrease over time.

• Top ranking organic results have a far better conversion rate.

In the few years that I have been involved in online marketing I have experienced that companies that allocate more of their internet marketing budget towards SEO experience far higher returns. Clearly, this statement will only hold true when you use an SEO company that knows what they are doing and can deliver top rankings in the Search Engines.

It’s important to note that given the complexity and ever-changing nature of Google’s ranking algorithm there is no SEO company in the world that can provide a top ranking guarantee. At the same time, a really good SEO company will be able to provide examples of their ranking performance and be able to guarantee consistent growth in traffic volumes.

If you are looking for an SEO company that knows what they are doing and can provide a long list of current rankings in competitive markets – then look no further. We have dozens of SEO clients from a diverse range of industries, who are all reaping the rewards of organic traffic and experiencing phenomenal ROI.

Want to increase your traffic, revenue and profits? Contact us today to get a free SEO quote!

Why do we build Links? The two main reasons are:

1. Search Engine Rankings

Inbound links are very important to your website. Every inbound link associated with your website counts as a ‘vote’ in the eyes of the Search Engines. Why a vote? An inbound link is effectively a vote of confidence. Search Engines assume that if another website is willing to link to yours you must have something worthwhile on there. In other words, the more quality, one-way inbound links you have pointing to your website, the more popular your site will be with the Engines.

1. Traffic

Links also guide browsers in finding the information they are searching for. Links can in fact be seen as the doorways to every single page on the World Wide Web. This means that you can generate higher amounts of user traffic to your site by having links all over the Web pointing to your site. More traffic means more potential customers and that means, (potentially) a higher conversion rate! If these links come from sites related to yours, the users that arrive at your site would have been searching for the product or service that you provide and thus will be much more likely to actually move to action. This is why your product or service has to be the best or has to be presented in the best possible way. You don’t want the potential client to be unable to find the information they are looking for and move on!

Social Media is probably one of the most popular Link Building strategies out there, and for good reason.

These days it is possible to find breaking news on Social Bookmarking sites like Digg even before the top news agencies had had a chance to publish anything (in fact many of these news sites get their breaking news from the Social Media sites).

Link Building with the help of Social Media sites is a great strategy if you know how to use it properly. Merely leaving your links on all the bookmarking sites you can find most definitely does not guarantee you anything in the way of traffic or “Link Juice”. Here is how you SHOULD be doing it:

• First and foremost, building a good reputation in the Social Media realm is a must! Top Social Media users are known throughout the platform they are using, and therefore they have an army of followers that vote for their additions.

• Don’t bookmark for the sake of a link. Your work will count for nothing. Here, like everywhere else on the web, content is king. Contributing useful and interesting information to the Network will ensure that users click on your link and you will build your reputation.

• Choosing a “catchy” title and using market-related keywords in that title could mean the difference to your bookmark moving up in the ranks or being buried under all the thousands of daily bookmarked sites.

• Choosing the correct category for your bookmark is also very important. Religious Social Media users will bury your link if they feel that you are only interested in leaving your link for self gain. In other words, don’t bookmark your “Cute Kittens” site in the World News Category.

Web2.0 can be classified as sites on the web where the user can contribute to the information found on that site. A good example would be Social Media sites, like Reddit.

There are others, like the well-known and much-used Wiki’s. Wikipedia is a vast source of user generated knowledge and information. AboutUs.org is another Wiki that is mainly used to advertise your service or product on a different platform than your official site. Do a good job and make sure that you don’t duplicate content from your existing site, and the good folks at AboutUs.org can actually remove the No Follow attribute from your created page. Link Juice!!!!!!

Web 3.0 – the Semantic web is on the rise.

Web3.0 uses the semantics of language to be able to deduce what it is that you, as a consumer, like. This means it analyses your likes and dislikes in order to send relevant content your way. Awesome, right? Twine.com is a fantastic Web 3.0 platform. This is a Web 3.0 Social Media site consumers can use to create and bookmark their own “Twines” of information.

Social Media is here to stay. It is already evolving with the use of the Semantic Web. We should keep evolving and use the technology that is out there. Who knows, in the near future the entire Internet will probably be personalised to your suit your specific requirements!

This is a huge problem for website owners all over the world. Unfortunately your website is a virtual drop in the ocean. Without a proper search engine optimisation game plan you really have little hope of ever being found online. Every day, millions of new sites, pages, pictures, audio files and videos are uploaded onto the vast plains of the internet, all competing for exposure. Your website or webpage is just another one of these many pages. So what can you do to make yours stand out from the rest (as far as search engines go, that is.)?

There are two main areas that you should look at improving on.

Your on page optimisation and your off page optimisation need to be carefully planned. Ideally you should address this BEFORE you begin building your website. Like any business model in any industry you need to make sure that you plan ahead.

Planning your on page optimisation means that you need to make sure you are targeting the right keywords for your industry. You need to ensure that your web pages are as search engine friendly as possible. A very important aspect of your website is the interlinking between pages. Make sure your site is accessible to both humans and search engine spiders alike.

Off page optimisation is equally important. There are factors that influence your rankings in the SERPS that have nothing to do with what happens ON your website. One of these things is incoming links into your website. There is a great deal of importance put on links.

So, do the research and optimise your site for the Search Engines. This will help you rank better in the Search Engines and as a result your traffic will increase and ultimately conversion will take place.

Blogs are a fantastic way to add unique, quality content onto your site without having to be as formal as you usually would. Adding information like company news, industry news and press releases adds quality, on topic content to your website. Remember, the more relevant content you have on your website, the better chance of it being found.

Another reason for having a company blog is that they enable you to interact publicly with your customers. Blogs have the ability for people to leave comments on your posts. This means that if your company launches a new product/service you have a great opportunity to answer any questions people might have about it. This can lead to an increased sales conversion rate.
The question then needs to be asked, do you go for an offsite or onsite company blog? First let’s look at the difference between the two.

Onsite Company Blog. An onsite company blog is one which is on your company website itself. For example your blog might be http://www.company.com/blog or http://blog.company.com.

Offsite Company Blog. An offsite company blog is a blog on an external domain, or free domain where you can write posts about your online business and link back to your main website.

So which is better, an onsite or offsite company blog?

They both have their benefits however we lean towards an onsite company blog for a few reasons.

1. You are adding quality, relevant content regularly. Search engines love websites that regularly update and have fresh content.
2. You can make use interlink your pages. It is good SEO practise to make sure your pages are interlinked to each other. More specifically, you need to ensure that these pages are interlinked correctly and you are channelling your link juice to the right pages.
3. Build your reputation in your industry. By having a blog directly linked to your company you really illustrate your expertise in your field.

The main benefit of an offsite company blog is that you can make great use of obtaining external links to your website. However, the fresh, well written unique content you are placing on this site could be much more potent if it was indeed placed on your website rather than externally.

Keyword research should be the first step in any SEO campaign. Finding the perfect keywords for your specific niche or industry is a must.
Without knowing which keywords you want to target, you won’t be able to write any content for your website. When you write content first and then research your keywords second, you probably will have to plug those keywords into your written content, wasting your valuable optimization time.
Finding the right keywords to target can be quite a process:

Firstly, you need to research your industry and find out what keywords or phrases people are using to search for the products and services in your industry. Luckily for us, Google provides you with a free keyword research tool that will give you a pretty accurate average based on current keyword searches. When using this Keyword tool, you will also have to research which country or countries will be the target market for your product or service.
It doesn’t end here though. When you know which keywords and market will be targeted, you will have to refine your keywords to the industry and accommodate it with the product/service specific keywords. Targeting the key phrase “Cape Town Travel” when you have a Cape Town accommodation site simply won’t do. This keyword is too generic, and will not bring in the desired or potential client i.e. someone who is looking to book accommodation in Cape Town.
There are many more aspects to consider when researching possible keywords for your site such as:

• Branding Perceptions – Many company leaders and CEO’s have their own interpretation of how they want their brand to be portrayed and ostensibly perceived online.

• Existing Brands – If a company decides to sell Nike trainers online, the market is already highly competitive, and the Nike brand itself is predominant.

• Geographic targeting – Depending on what a company sells or offers, overlooking the likelihood of the inclusion of geographical locations in the search query may be highly detrimental.

• Long Tail Keywords – The long tail in keyword research is basically an expansion of a core, generic and high volume keyword phrase which includes numerous combinations and permutations of the keywords and their associated or relevant phrases.

Simply put, there is much more to keyword research than just choosing the keywords that you would search for and then hastily plugging that keyword everywhere into your site. So when you build your new site, Keyword research should be the first thing you do.

Widely whispered to be one of the most important aspects of Search
Engine Optimisation, link building is very much like starting an exercise
routine. Not the easiest of tasks by a long shot, it takes time and effort to
get a successful link building campaign off the ground and even more time to
see the results of your efforts. Suffice to say you’ll have to run around
the track a few times before the muscle starts to show.

Getting links to your site is crucial if you want to dominate the Search engine
results pages on Google and its contemporaries.

Jealously guarding our coveted market-related keywords we all strive to rank
within that mystical top 10 search engine results on Google – that Global
Super Power of the search engine marketing world.

One of the best ways to earn a spot in that elusive
top 10 is to get other sites to vote for yours. Think of each link you build
as a little ballot paper, a stamp of approval that marks you as an authority
in the specific market you choose to target.

Just to make matters a little more complicated it has to be said that not just
any link will do. The links pointing to your site should be relevant, i.e. the
site that links to you should have similar content or content related to the
information on your site. Furthermore, you should also take into account factors
like the age of the site that’s linking to you, the other sites it’s
linked to, as well as the sites that link to them. All of these pesky little
factors can make or break your link building efforts

The fact of the matter is that link building is HARD and, at times, severely
frustrating, but if you keep at it and bear in mind the fundamental link building
guidelines you are sure to see the results.