Feed: R.O.I Media | Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Professionals - AggScore: 67.9

There has been a little bit of controversy in the land of Google PPC recently, as Adwords users around the world are complaining that Google is taking too long to approve their PPC ads.

If you have been using Google Adwords for a few years you might have noticed that the time taken for new or edited ads to be approved is becoming increasingly longer. This is especially the case when creating image ads and ads focused on content networks. Why is this happening, that is the PPC question that everyone is asking?

The answer is simple, and it boils down to the sheer number of people and businesses (as well as spammers) using Adwords. The number of ads being created by current and new Adwords users is growing daily, and while Google has some strict policy guidelines about what is and isn’t allowed in ads, all ads that have been created still have to be reviewed and approve/disapproved. It seems that some ads get reviewed by computer systems and algorithms, but image ads and those targeting content network seemingly has to be viewed by a physical person. This method, unlike a computer system, is time consuming and causes a delay when waiting to get ads approved, but it does allows for more accuracy in the reviewing process.

Some PPC users have stated that Google may take up to 46 working hours to approve ads. That means that ads could be approved after approximately 7 working days. If you happen to submit an ad for approval on a Friday afternoon then you better be prepared to wait a little longer, as over weekends there is less man-power to review ads so the process is delayed even further. Google is, however, double-checking the ads. This means that all ads are being reviewed twice ever since the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has taken a firm stance and Google was forced to become extremely strict with regard to ads.

I already hear everyone crying, “What is Google doing about increasing the speed of the review process?” Well, the answer is simple - at this moment, based on my exhaustive research into the subject, I surmise that Google is not doing anything it is telling anyone about! In all likelihood Google is working behind the scenes on an ingenious way to speed up the process, or perhaps they already have a solution. The fact of the matter is that we just don’t know yet and we will have to wait and see what Google has in store for us mere mortals.

We all know that links are extremely important when it comes to SEO and to get your site ranking for all those top industry keywords. We are so obsessed with acquiring those inbound links every month that many of us forget that the links you create internally between the pages of your site are also an extremely important element in Onsite SEO.

Internal linking is right up there as one of the most important Onsite SEO elements in my book. It’s amazing what a good internal linking structure can do for your website and individual page rankings. So let’s first have a look at why internal linking is so important.

Internal Linking serves multiple purposes:

1. To increase Page Rank of internal or ‘deep’ pages.
2. To build relevancy of a page to a keyword or key phrase.
3. To ensure that your site in its entirety is spidered, even those pages that are not referenced in your main navigation.

Increasing Page Rank of Internal Pages

Google allocates a value to every page of your site. For this they use Page Rank. Many refer to Page Rank as the “juice” allocated to each page and the website as a whole. Your homepage is seen as the most important page of your site and therefore the Homepage will always have the highest Page Rank value.  This Page Rank is then distributed between the lower pages of your site as illustrated in the image below:

The links that point from your home page to internal pages are usually found in the Main navigation of the site. This allows your Homepage Page Rank to flow naturally to the internal pages that are being linked to. The ‘juice’ gets distributed evenly across the pages that are being linked to.

Building Relevancy of a Page to a Keyword

The first and most important step of any successful SEO campaign is without a doubt Keyword Research.
You have to have a very clear objective of which pages you want to rank for and for which keywords or phrases. When creating your internal linking structure you cannot just link to pages using any random text you feel like. You need to use the targeted keyword of the page you are linking to in your anchor text.

Links act like votes for the pages that they link to. So, if you link to a page using “click here” enough times, that page will start to rank for the keyword “click here” in the Search Engines. Go ahead and do a search for the poor guy who ranks NO 1 for “Click Here”!

Ensuring your whole site gets spidered and indexed

Making sure your website and all its pages are spidered by the search engines is in all probability the easiest thing you can do to increase your rankings. You see, the more pages of your site are indexed in the Search Engines the more content you have to offer the user. The more content you have on your site, the more keywords you will inevitably have in this content. And the more keywords you have the better the chances of ranking for those keywords.

So why would Search Engines not be able to spider all your pages without internal linking? Pages can be hidden from search engine spiders when linking is done in a way that the spider cannot read to follow those links. This would happen if your site uses a script-based navigation system for example. Also, image-based navigation may be crawlable or spiderable by search engines, but the search engines can’t see images and therefore can’t assign any relevancy from the image to the page that is being linked to.

Well that’s all I have for now. I hope you got all of that, but if you didn’t, don’t despair! Just give ROI Media a call and we’ll sort you out.

One of the most important yardsticks to measure the success of any web-based venture is its online conversion rate. Getting people to your site is all good and well, but the real measure of your website’s design and content is whether you are able to turn the casual browser into a paying customer.

Those who endeavour to increase conversion and do research on the topic will find a slew of online references that tout everything from eye-tracking to hover-to-click-ratio as the ultimate answer to conversion-related worries. Sifting through this heap of information can be confusing and frustrating to say the least. So, before you throw out the baby with the proverbial bathwater and shell out your hard-earned cash for a complete website redesign, we recommend that you take a good, hard look at your current website to see if there are simple adjustments you can make.

Ask yourself: where do I lose my customer? At which point along the browsing-to-purchase timeline does my potential customer become so frustrated/disinterested that they abandon their shopping cart rather than proceeding to the checkout point? The very first thing you should be looking at is your Call to Action buttons. When you look at these buttons there are two very important questions you should be asking yourself:

1.    When a visitor clicks on this link, what exactly will they see next?
2.    Will what they see encourage/discourage them to take the action I want them to take (i.e. make a purchase)?

Here are a few examples of buttons that will have your potential customer heading for the hills:

• The ‘empty cart’ button. How often have you filled your real life shopping cart with groceries only to be tackled by a store assistant who grabs the contents of your cart and puts it back on the shelves? Never? Well, why then do we assume that putting an ‘empty cart’ (identical in every conceivable way to the ‘place order’ or ‘proceed to checkout’ button) next to the button we really want the customer to click is a good idea? Time is money, and if you waste your customers’ they will take their business elsewhere.

• The completely irrelevant link. A good example of an irrelevant link is the distracting (and actually extremely irritating) banner advertisements that some sites put on their shopping cart pages. You have just gotten your potential customer to the very place you wanted them from the start, why break their concentration now?

• The ‘reset form’ button. How many times have you gone through the time-consuming rigmarole of filling out an online  form with all your personal details only to find that you have accidentally filled out those of your deceased grandmother? If indeed you have you will be one of very few people on the planet who have found the ‘reset form’ button useful. Placing this button next to a ‘submit application’ button has the potential to cause confusion, evoke swearing and even lose you a customer.

These are just some of the simple mistakes that website owners make every day. There are a myriad more. Why not contact us and set up a meeting so we may discuss the easiest way of improving your online conversion rate?

If you are currently using the internet as a marketing tool, then you already know that SEO is one of the most important weapons in your online marketing arsenal. Without it, your business will be virtually invisible to the casual internet browser. The question is, should you outsource a firm to handle your online marketing strategy or should you keep things simple and conduct your SEO business in-house?

It is a common misconception that in-house SEO is the more cost-effective solution. In terms of Rands and cents this might quite frequently be the case, but once you start evaluating the situation from a return on investment standpoint, the picture begins to look a whole lot different. Search engines change their algorithms often, new rules are constantly formulated and to keep up you will need the resources and time to find, understand and implement the necessary changes to keep your website updated and viable.

An in-house SEO expert can become so entangled in the specifics of your company’s particular strategies and implementation processes that they lose sight of what is going on a larger scale. Outsourced SEO firms, on the other hand, are far more likely to be familiar with current SEO trends. The very fact that they ply their trade in a variety of industries means that they have to stay abreast of protocol and techniques if they intend to compete in the marketplace, giving them a definite advantage over someone who only focuses on one site in one industry.

Furthermore, it is ludicrous to assume that a single individual could embody the great variety of skills that it takes to make a marketing strategy work. By employing an SEO firm to handle your online marketing affairs, you are effectively purchasing many years worth of combined knowledge and expertise – all of which will be focused on making your site a lean, mean conversion machine. An SEO firm is able to do in a matter of days when it could take an individual employee (no matter how dedicated and diligent) weeks to achieve. In business time this equates to money and by outsourcing your SEO you will manage to stay ahead of the curve.

To summarise, here is a handy table:

The advantages and disadvantages of both in-house and outsourced SEO are clear to see. In the end it all boils down to this: no matter how good you think you are or how well you think you understand the SEO industry, you will never attain the same results that a dedicated SEO company is able to.

Good SEO pays for itself. After all, you wouldn’t try to fix your own car, remodel your own house or put braces on your own child if you did not have the necessary expertise, so why do it to your website? In these economically challenging times, your website represents the most cost-effective way to promote your business and generate sales - it could very well become the lifeblood of your business.

Let ROI Media perform a free appraisal of your in-house SEO; it’s the easiest way to find out if you are heading in the right direction.

Talent cannot be handed down from father to son, neatly wrapped in its golden sheet of promises and successful future endeavours. Talent is fruit, plucked from the gray streets of our cities and devoured with relish by those who need it most. This is where you come in. ROI Media is searching for talented individuals to fill SEO positions that are constantly cropping up in our constantly-burgeoning business. This is your time to take up a position that will expand your mind as much as it will enhance your position in the exhilarating world of online marketing.

A decade ago, these positions did not exist. SEO was in its infancy. The world was not ready for this, the ultimate form of marketing. Now it is a fully-grown entity, with copywriting, SEO, web design and many more factors combining to form successful online ventures - ventures that have silenced the naysayers and dwarfed any preconceived expectations.

There are different SEO positions available at ROI Media. Join us in the frontlines of SEO as a junior apprentice and cut your teeth on the very basics, before delving into the deep-end as it were. Prerequisites; there are a few. As stated in the introduction, we require talent. A keen individual who enjoys the social interaction that the internet provides will be considered, as will those who are motivated to achieve nothing less than the best results through personal accomplishment. This is all it takes (plus a matric diploma or equivalent) to become something of an SEO guru.

For the individual who has experienced the wonders of SEO and has talent to spare, we can provide a home that will nurture your much-needed skills. A step up from the Junior SEO position is the illustrious job of an SEO analyst. If you have worked in the field of SEO before or you have a keen understanding for keyword researching, HTML and the ability to work under a truckload of demanding clientele, then this is a position custom-made for you. Your time is now, escape from the tyranny of oppressive, boring work and join ROI Media; the leaders in breakthrough SEO development. We are the company you have been searching for.

Are you the one that we want at ROI Media?

Email CVs and a concise cover letter to: seocareers@roimedia.co.za

Creating new, fresh content for your site on a regular basis is a must! This is the main driving power to get your pages indexed by Google regularly.

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.

I often have people asking me for tips on SEO. I never know what to say, because SEO focuses on a wide spectrum of areas. Would you like tips on the optimisation of meta-data, SEO link-building or perhaps keyword research? The fact of the matter is that SEO covers so many areas, and even so-called SEO experts don’t always realize just how many factors have to be taken into account.

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.

The online marketing world is developing at a tremendous rate every single day and along with it, the way we approach search engine optimization. In such a dynamic environment it is par for the course that there are going to be some fundamental principles that fall by the wayside, that is why we thought it wise to compile a handy little checklist for those of you who like to stay on top of things. Common SEO mistakes to avoid include:

1. Focusing on irrelevant keywords:

This is a common misdemeanor committed even by seasoned SEO experts. Website owners choose keywords based on terms they think are representative of the content of their site, but these terms may not be in the lexicon of the average user.

If, for instance, your site functions as an online pharmacy you may assume that the term ‘online pharmacy’ should be relevant. You could find, however, that ‘online prescription medication’ is more frequently searched and therefore more fruitful. Don’t break your head, simply use a good Keyword Suggestion Tool and take the human error factor out of the equation.

2. Giving the title tag the cold shoulder:

To ignore your title tag is just plain mean. This seemingly unassuming location is in fact the absolute perfect place to put a keyword. Not only does it give your SEO a boost, but the text embedded in the title tag also shows up in Google SERPs as the title of your page.

3. Not giving your user the option of an HTML alternative to a Flash site:

Flash animation is a very useful tool for the web designer as it allows them a variety of interesting avenues to explore in terms of the visual aspects of a site. However, it is not a particular favourite of users and search engines.

If you absolutely insist on a Flash-based site and you still want it to be user-friendly and visible to spiders, provide an HTML version every time.

4. Relying on JavaScript menus to index your site:

JavaScript navigation is by no means a bad option, as long as you (as a developer) realise that search engines are incapable of reading it. The solution is to build your web pages accordingly by providing a sitemap in order to make your links accessible to the spiders. The other option is creating a text-based menu that is readable by the search engine spiders.

5. Abandoning your baby:

Optimising a site is similar to having a baby in the sense that you can’t just abandon it to its own devices as soon as it’s live. If you want your site to prosper, you have to give it constant attention. This means regular optimisation, noting changes in search engine algorithms and staying ahead of the competition.

And there you have it. Five tips to keep your site ahead of the SEO curve. Make a note of these and remember to discuss it with your online marketing team the next time you get together.

I’m copywriter, and it means the world to me. Copywriting promotes an idea; it generates interest in the topic of my choice. Yet, I do not write for magazines and my work will never be displayed on a billboard high above Long Street. I am an SEO copywriter and my work targets both the casual browser and the search engines. It has to be well-written, correctly structured, typo-free and keyword rich. I began with little knowledge of the realm, with only my innate writing ability and a desire to learn guiding me through my first months of copywriting. This however, was not enough for my job.

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.

In the world of SEO, the onsite elements might not carry as much weight as the offsite SEO elements, but if onsite SEO isn’t done up to the correct standards, your site rankings for those coveted Top Industry Keywords will most assuredly become negatively influenced.

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.