Thomas Pretty asked:


There is little doubt that search engine optimisation is a key component of modern business. Every business worth their weight employs some form of SEO to ensure they receive increased traffic.

Optimisation has become integral to attracting potential customers to websites; maximising web traffic is the name of the game. This involves making your company website more SEO friendly whilst also increasing the usability for customers.

With so many search engine optimisation services available on the market the choice can be daunting to say the least. All claim they will be able to provide results and increase traffic to your site. There are however certain factors to consider before picking a company. Here are a few of them.

Before looking for an optimisation company ensure you understand as much as you can about optimising search engine traffic. Researching the process of SEO is simple enough, there are plenty of articles and journals out there for you to read and expand your knowledge. Possessing knowledge of search engine optimisation will help you pick the right SEO company and avoid the ones that use unscrupulous ‘black hat’ methods. It also means you can be involved in the optimisation process with the company.

With so many optimisation services out there it is important to get quotes from a variety of businesses. The most expensive is not always the most efficient, look for those who have realistic prices for the services they offer. Also look how well the company has carried out optimisation on their own website; for a company that professes to carry out SEO as their primary business function; they should be no less than number five.

If your search engine optimisation company has guaranteed you number one ranking on a variety of engines; walk away. Nobody can guarantee these placements and any company that does is essentially dishonest. Google themselves have stated that it is impossible to guarantee number one spot for any particular search term.

As with utilising services such as plumbers and builders, receiving personal recommendations are crucial. Your search engine optimisation company should be happy to supply you with references of companies they have worked with and achieved successful results. If you receive a set of keywords and ranking information verify this yourself by searching the terms in different engines.

It is important to define what services your search engine optimisation company will provide. SEO should involve on and off page services. Find out exactly what the optimisers want to do; web analysis, keyword analysis, ranking reports and optimisation content writing should all be included as part of an efficient campaign. Linking should also provide a core part of the services and will lead to better rankings in the long run.

Optimisation is an ongoing process, algorithms and processes change regularly so optimisation is a constant task. Modifying a website is a priority in order for it to keep up with the latest methodology. SEO companies should be extremely well informed on search engine matters. A monthly plan of action should be followed and will help in maintaining rankings and keeping up to date with search trends.

Following this advice should lead to efficient search engine optimisation and finding the right company to carry out the task. Results however are rarely immediate, SEO is a process that takes time and a reputable company will focus on long term goals for increasing traffic. Playing the ‘long game’ is a vital part of SEO, the old adage of ‘patience is a virtue’ is definitely true in the optimisation industry. Rankings however will eventually come and improve the profits for your business.



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Kronik Media asked:


Search engine optimisation is the process of increasing visitors to your website. More traffic to your website will result in increased leads and sales. The main purpose of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to increase website hits by ranking high in the results of searches performed on major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Search engine optimisation is a highly specialised field that requires experience and knowledge of different search engine optimisation techniques that can help increase the rank of a website on search engines like Google. Competition to appear on the first page of search engine is tough as there are more than 40 million websites in the world and only a handful can appear on the first few pages.

Keywords are search phrases that users type in search engines to find websites. Identifying a list of appropriate keyword phrases for your website is one of the first steps in the search engine optimisation process. Using tools a search engine marketing consultant can assist you with identifying the most appropriate keywords that could drive traffic to your website with a view to increase sales for your business.

Identifying keywords and submitting your website to search engine such as Google is only a small step in the Search engine optimisation process and by no means sufficient to get your website listed on the first few pages. Getting your website to appear on the first page of Google and generating sufficient traffic to be able to drive sales for your business is quite a lengthy process and would in most cases require up to a year of search engine optimisation campaign conducted by a specialist in the field.

In spite of the difficulties and time involved, search engine optimisation is by far the most cost effective and wide reaching form of advertising available today. Although there are many search engine optimisation companies that claim to achieve quick results within weeks, such claims are often misleading. It is important for businesses to focus on long term campaign for 6 months to a year at the least. It is only then can a business truly benefit from increased leads and sales via the increased traffic to the website generated as a direct result of href=http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk/blog/what-is-search-engine-optimisation/12/>search engine optimisation.

There are no Search Engine Optimization secrets – just SEO tasks and methodologies applied professionally on an ongoing basis in order to beat your competition in obtaining a high ranking for desired search keywords.

Please visit http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk/blog for the full article and for more articles on web design, e-commerce and search engine optimisation.



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Kronik Media asked:


en you are first deciding on online marketing in order to promote your business online, the main online marketing methods that you will encounter are Organic search engine optimisation and Pay per click advertising such as Google Adwords.

Organic search engine optimisation and Pay pr click advertising are the two main methods of online marketing. Both these forms of online marketing are aimed at getting highly targeted visitors to your website by making your website rank on search engine results for the keywords that you are targeting.

Ideally a business needs to utilise both, organic Search engine optimisation as well as Pay per click advertising on order to get the maximum exposure for their business online. However cost and budget considerations often result in a business having to make a choice between using organic search engine optimisation or Pay per click advertising for their business.

Before discussing which form of online marketing is better for your business, it is important to understand the difference between organic search engine optimisation and pay per click advertising. Organic search engine optimisation refers to the search results that appear in the main centre section of the search results. Ranking within organic search engine results cannot be bought and ranking is a result of organic non-biased steps taken over a period of time. It is dependent on the overall popularity of your website on the internet in general among other on site factors. Organic listings are the results that appear in the main section of a search engine such as Google when we search for something. Pay per click advertising on the other hand refers to the paid listing or sponsored results that appear on the right of the search results page and not in main middle section of the page.

Pay per click result is paid for and results are almost immediate to achieve. However there are many drawbacks to pay per click advertising as compared with Organic search engine optimisation. The recent years have seen an exponential rise in competition and a steep rise in pay per click costs. Click fraud is another rising concern in pay per click advertising where an advertiser may be charged for clicks that are not by genuine customers.

1) Many surveys and search engine marketing studies have pointed than users are more likely to click on organic search results that appear on the main section of the page rather than the paid listings that appear as ads on the right.

2) Organic listings are non-biased and cannot be bought. As such users trust the results more than the paid listings which are a result of paid advertising. The conversion rate for organic listings is much higher than for paid listings.

3) Rising cost of pay per click. Pay per click campaigns are becoming more and expensive day by day as competition is increasing. It is common now a days to be pay as much as £1 or £2 per click for a op 5 position in pay per click campaigns like Google ad words.

4) The results of organic search engine optimisation campaign are more permanent that pay per click. In pay per click the results stop almost immediately at the end of the campaign whereas in organic listings the rank remains.

Although the main advantages of organic search engine optimisation over Pay per click advertising are discussed above, Pay per click advertising has its advantages. Pay per click advertising is a much quicker way to get results. This is useful to advertise events and other marketing campaigns that cannot be planned months in advance. Organic search engine optimisation is a time consuming task and organic listings often take months to achieve.

 

In the long run investing an organic search engine optimisation is beneficial. Organic search engine optimisation has lower costs and offers a high return on investment. Once a favourable ranking has been achieved in organic search engine optimisation, it is more permanent. In pay per click the results will atop immediately when the payment has stopped and the campaign comes to an end. Organic search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign also has a wider coverage and generates maximum exposure for your business.

Any organic campaign in order to achieve first page rank in Google will focus on a variety of techniques not only submission to search engines, e.g. directory submissions, press releases, article marketing and social media marketing. All this is important in order to generate quality back links to your website and will most certainly be covered in any organic search engine campaign that is run on behalf of your website.

Organic search engine optimisation is hence a better rounded approach to online marketing and has a much wider coverage. Although you may not see the result within the first few months it will be an extremely useful marketing investment for any business. The benefits of an organic search engine optimisation far outweigh any risks involved with investing in a one year organic search engine optimisation campaign.

More practical website marketing tips and discussion can be found on the Search engine marketing and E-Commerce advice for business blog

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Thomas Pretty asked:


In the world of search engine optimisation there are generally two schools of thought on the methods and techniques that should be utilised to raise a website in search engine rankings. Of these two schools there is ‘black hat’ optimisation that can be described as unethical and pursues a course of action that works towards hoodwinking the search engine mechanisms into raising a sites’ profile. By using black hat optimisation methods however you will in fact harm your rankings in the long run, more advisable is the ethical route.

The history of black hat optimisation started around a decade ago when the search engine mechanisms, or algorithms were not yet developed entirely. Like most things in life if there is a way to cheat the system many will try. In these early stages the search engine algorithms were manipulated. This was especially true in the ‘adult’ industries where black hat optimisation was employed extensively to raise specific sites’ rankings. But how has black hat developed? What methods of optimisation are still considered unethical in the eyes of a search engine?

First and foremost a commonly used method has been keyword stuffing. Put literally this is the process of filling a webpage with lists of keywords that attempt to make a website more relevant in the eyes of search engines. Google especially has worked to remove the effects of this method by searching for true text rather than lists of bad prose that simply contain the right words. If a search engine does find you guilty of using such methods, penalties will undoubtedly follow.

Another method of black hat methods is the process of cloaking that utilises a hidden webpage that is only visible to search engine spiders. In combination to this hidden page that is only visible to the spiders there is an accompanying webpage that is viewed by human users. Once again this form of optimisation is seriously frowned upon in the SEO world.

In combination with keyword stuffing is the process of using invisible text, or mosaic cloaking. This is the process of making text boxes full of keywords, usually using a font colour that matches the background and hence invisible to the human user while remaining visible to spiders.

Another way of optimising a website unethically is to create a doorway page. Put simply this is a page that has undergone a process of optimisation and subsequently has great search engine rankings. The problem however is that this page has no real content and is purely used to link to another less highly ranked page. In conjunction with these doorway pages are spam pages that perform much the same purpose but instead are full of adverts that make money from each click; fundamentally these are detrimental to the quality of the internet.

Interlinking is another method of black hat optimisation that creates many websites and simultaneously links them all together to improve the back links to a site. This can be fruitful for improved rankings but once again will eventually harm rankings once search engine regulators pick up on it.

Finally there are two techniques that have been developed to combat the ever more advanced search engine algorithms. One of these is selling page rank, a process that simply involves selling links from a highly rankled page to a lower one. The other is buying expired domain names of sites that originally had good rankings and keeping the high number of links related to the site.

These methods are seriously unethical in the optimisation industry although unfortunately still employed by some unscrupulous operators. The crux of the issue is that they actively work to reduce the relevance of search engine results and subsequently are frowned upon.

There are operators out there who follow ethical methods and instead of trying to manipulate the algorithms use them to their advantage; this has been broadly labelled as search engine compliance. By studying the SEO methods that are being utilised on your behalf it is possible to identify the black hatters and instead use a white hat or ethical SEO specialist.



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