Whether you are a complete beginner or you an SEO master, these sites have enough of a back catalogue and regular new information to keep you going for months!

1. http://www.seomoz.org/blog: Starting as an SEO agency they have used their blog to position themselves as a global resource for the industry
2. http://www.seobook.com/blog: A mix of practical advice, industry news and personal opinion
3. http://searchengineland.com/columns/: one of my favourite sites, the columns section covers all aspects of search marketing
4. http://searchenginewatch.com/sew_archive_experts&type=sew_experts/sem-101&issue=2009: Really good introductory articles to various aspects of online marketing
5. http://www.wolf-howl.com: This site has been around for years and it mixes advice with commentary and personal opinion
6. http://econsultancy.com/blog: The volume of posts each day can be a bit too much and some articles don’t go in to a lot of detail, but the percentage that do hit the money make it worth it.
7. http://www.toprankblog.com/: Good traditional ‘how to’ blog with some great advice for all levels of knowledge

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There are 6 different types of risk:

• Physical risk (Will it physically hurt them or anyone else?)
• Functional risk (Will it work how they want it to?)
• Social risk (Is it socially acceptable within their circle?)
• Psychological risk (How does the product fit in with their perception of themselves?)
• Financial risk (Can they afford it?)
• Time risk (Is the time it takes to buy the product worth the effort?)

Your aim should be to use your website to provide visitors with the information they need to overcome their perceived risk.

Contact us, find us & about us pages
No one likes to spend money with a faceless company with no clear way of getting in touch if there are any problems. Easy to find ‘contact us’ and if you have offices, ‘find us’ pages show people there is someone on the other side. Equally ‘about us’ pages help to put you and your website in to context along with adding a personal touch, especially if you use photos of yourself.

Money back guarantee
The inability to see a product or touch it is one of the major hurdles people have to get over when purchasing online and a product can look very different in the real world to the image on the website. You can help reduce the financial risk by allowing them to return it and get their money back. This also goes for services.

Demo of product
In a similar vein to the point above, screen shots are not always enough for some visitors. Being able to ‘test drive’ the service before they commit to a purchase is a major plus for many visitors and will increase your conversion rate.

3rd party endorsements
Having your product endorsed by a business or personality well regarded in your field will reduce psychological and social risk by creating a sense of trust through your association with them. This can be as simple as listing your blue chip suppliers (e.g. Microsoft) all the way up to getting a celebrity on board (e.g. a football apparel website hiring a footballer)

Testimonials, case studies & customer comments
Being able to see there are existing (happy) customers is important to potential customers because they don’t want to feel they are alone. You can help to Increase the credibility of any comments and/ or testimonials with the person’s names, links to follow and putting the date of their comment to show how fresh they are.

Heritage
The knowledge you are dealing with an established and stable brand is important to customers because they associate that with being trustworthy. Few website owners can claim “Since 1908” but because the internet is so new and sites come and go so quickly, a web site as recent as “since 2004” can feel like an old horse!

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To ensure the searcher a) comes directly to your website and b) doesn’t see any negative entries that can creep in to the top 10 results, it is important that you use as wide a range of branded content as possible for the search engines to spider and rank. Taking your position at number one in the SERP organic section as red, below are other methods to ensure you dominate your brand searches.

Paid search top result

It may seem strange to bid on your own brand name when you already have top organic position but with clicks likely to be as low as 5p to 20p per click you should view it as an investment in online real estate. Eye tracking research shows that people’s eyes start at the top of the SERP and as you go down the page fewer and fewer people look at that area (see the research here).  By having two entries at the top you are increasing the likelihood of a click and forcing other results further below the fold. You are also blocking anyone else bidding for the top paid spot on your brand name.

Put your blog on a sub domain

Google views sub-domains as separate entities to the main site which gives you a great opportunity to get a 2nd entry in the organic results by naming your blog something along the lines of http://blog.domain.com

Create a Facebook page

A well populated and linked to (e.g. from your main website) Facebook company profile should see your Facebook profile be shown high in the rankings. To set up a business profile go here http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Wikipedia page

Although the terms state that you are not allowed to write an entry about an organisation you are associated with, let’s be honest, it happens all the time. There are too many corporate entries for it no to! Google loves Wikipedia and ranks it’s page in the top 5 for countless search terms. Set up your own page to benefit from this love! Go to the home page here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and click on ‘create account’ in the top right to get started.

Google Universal Search

Google is always trying new ways at presenting the web’s information, and it is rare to be shown a SERP that doesn’t have either some results from Google News, Product search, blog search or all three! If you don’t have one, get a Google account and start using the submission and feed features to make sure Google is picking up your press releases, blog posts and displaying your products.

Twitter

As we touched on in a previous post about Twitter’s integration in to the fabric of search, Twitter accounts are only going to become more prominent in the SERP, not less. Make sure you have an account and link to it from your home page to show Google how important it is.

YouTube channel

Following the same theory as Facebook and Twitter, a profile on such a large and heavily linked website will be shown highly in searches for your brand name if combined with a respectable amount of content and a little linking from your own site to the channel’s home page. Create an account here http://www.youtube.com/create_account?next=None

What about page 2?

How often do you go beyond the first page of Google? Probably rarely if ever, and that’s the same for the majority of searchers. The truth is, if you’re in position 11 to 20, you’re going to get crumbs, if you’re not in the top 20, you’re nowhere!

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For small businesses, facing their industry’s big names in the search engines can be a no-win situation.  Think Asda versus a corner shop, Tony and Guy versus a small hairdresser and Stagecoach versus a local drama school.  By focusing on national SEO (thanks to much smaller resources) a local business is unlikely to ever appear alongside these business behemoths at all.  And we all know that it is a rare person who bothers to click onto the second page of Google.  Never mind pages 3, 4 and 5.

In 2006, iProspect, a search engine marketing firm based in Massachusetts, USA, stated in their White Paper Search Engine User Behavior Study, “The importance of appearing high in the search results has increased over time… more search engine users are clicking on the first page now (62% [2006]) than in 2004 (60%) than in 2002 (48%).  Inversely, fewer search engine users are willing to click on results past the third page now (10% [2006]) than in 2004 (13%) than in 2002 (19%).  Fast-forward to 2009 – and assuming  that these trends have continued, a business’ appearance in the first pages front of the search engines results, is more crucial than ever.

More recently, AOL released figures on CTR (click through rates) for the different positions in their index. The data set was sufficiently high enough to be considered accurate and thus can be expected to reflect traffic levels across most search engines – Google included. According to AOL’s results, only 10% of all searches resulted in clicks beyond page 1 of the results.

Yet, many small businesses bring SEO failure upon themselves, by not distinguishing between local SEO and national SEO.  Local SEO is similar to national SEO – but with one notable difference.  The keywords and content (images and information) are geographically specific.  While national SEO focuses on broad keywords, such as “Plumbers”, local SEO uses local modifiers:  “Plumbers, St. Albans, Hertfordshire”. And while the traffic will be lower in local SEO campaigns, they will pull in more qualified prospects.  After all, a plumber in Chester is of no use to an overflowing toilet in St. Albans.  Optimising locally also helps to build local relationships. In his 2008 book “The Complete SEO Copywriting Guide for Search Engine Rankings and Sales Conversion – Content Rich”, Jon Wuebben estimates that every month a billion local searches are made, and that it’s growing at a rate of 20-30% every year.

Thanks to recent algorithmic changes by Google over the last 12 months or so,the likelihood of locals finding you when they type in “Your Trade, Your Town” is now much higher.  Nobody really knows precisely what Google has done, or is currently doing for that matter – we only know what works and what does not through our own exhaustive testing.  What we do know, however,, is that Google is increasingly placing much more emphasis on local and geographical searches.  It has even been rumoured that  soon, users will be able to search Google within their own geographic parameters. So by modifying their sites to target local keyword phrases, local businesses will undoubtedly see significant improvement in their search engine placement – especially as local or geographic keyword phrases have much less competition anyway. The modifications required to optimise locally,  include  placing the chosen geographic keyword in the following areas:

• Title Tag <title>
• Meta Description Tag  <Meta description=”…”>
• Heading Tags <H1>, <H2> etc
• In the page content (bolding them for added weight, if possible)
• In an Alt tag or two
• In the footer of the home page

But remember NOT to keyword stuff- once or twice per tag type or content section should be sufficient.

Google’s Keyword Tool is a great tool with which to find effective keyword phrases: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal.  Here, a business is able to generate keyword ideas in two ways – by getting Google to scan the contents of their own website, or by inserting descriptive keywords (for example, “clothes shop Bath”).  Once one of these methods is selected, they insert either the URL of their website, or a few keyword phrases into the search box. The results page will reveal, not only related search terms, but also the average search volume per month.

A free Google Maps Listing will go nicely with these newly modified search terms.  It’s a highly effective way for local businesses to build up an online presence.  In fact, it’s a must.  To make use of this powerful tool, a local business must first create an account at https://www.google.com/accounts/ With this account, the business will be able to sign into  Google’s Local Business Centre http://www.google.com/local/add?hl=en-gb&gl=gb.  And it is here that they can create their free listing – including their contact details, opening hours and even product images and YouTube video.   Once a business has been verified and included in Google Maps, it can edit the contents at any time.

As well as making it even easier for local customers to find local companies, using this tool gives local businesses a second bite at the cherry to appear on that coveted first page.  This is because, in the majority of cases, Google will stick up to 10 of these listings ABOVE the normal organic results, when a geographic keyword is used. Go try it – search Google for plumbers + your town or city and see what happens!

Yahoo Local is another excellent local SEO resource. It offers a similar service to Google’s Maps Listing.  It’s not free however – the price varies according to the business location and the keyword phrase utilised.  But as all BT Internet users have Yahoo as their default search engine, it comes with a huge advantage.  Think of all those potential customers!

Other tips…

A further advantage of local SEO over national SEO, is that the popularity of famous landmarks or buildings in any given town, can be leveraged.  Let’s say you have a clothes shop in Brighton.  By simply embedding a picture of The Royal Pavilion on your site, for example (assuming it has been tagged appropriately), you’re likely to pull in a heap of local traffic.

Allowing customers to leave reviews on your website is another great promotional tool.  As your customers are likely to know you personally, they’ll be more likely to leave favourable reviews.  And as the readers of these reviews are likely to be other locals, the reviews will hold more credibility than those that appear on more corporate and national websites.  In this way, local trust and credibility is built.

If you are a business that gets most of its custom from the local market, yet are still relying on national SEO techniques to get you high up in the search engines, then you are risking your website disappearing into the depths of the internet altogether.

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INSTAPRISE Consultancy – Business Consultancy – On or Offline, from our exclusive team of Experts covering everything from Retail to Security to Recruitment.

INSTAPRISE Web Presence Set-up, inc: Design, Hosting, Transfers and SEO services

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Below is some advice and a few tips on writing a survey for your website.

Keep it short
No one wants to be faced with dozens of questions especially online where attention spans continue to fall. To ensure as many questions are answered as possible and reduce the drop out rate aim for 10 questions or less. If you decide to split the questions in to multiple pages don’t create so many stages it feels like they are climbing a mountain and always let them know where they are in the process e.g. step 2 of 5.

Give them a reason to take part
Provide a strong incentive for the participant to complete the survey and give you their contact details. For example, if you are running a survey to benchmark your industry you could give them access to the results or if it is a survey about your service a competition is always popular e.g. Win a laptop.

Structuring the questions
How you structure your questions will make the difference between having data you can apply and having a large spreadsheet sitting untouched on your computer. Some tips include…

1. Don’t weigh the answers in favour of a certain answer e.g. Excellent, Very good, Good, Poor (3 positive and only 1 negative)

2. Don’t put “don’t know” or “NA” as an option in middle (e.g. 3 of 6), it will make statistical analysis a nightmare. Put it as a separate option at the end

3. Avoid leading questions e.g. “Do you agree that…?”

4. Keep the question specific e.g. don’t use words such as “Occasionally”, “Often”, “Regularly” etc. What they mean differs from person to person

5. What does average mean? Don’t use it for the sake of it

6. Don’t fall in to trap of asking two questions in one sentence. “Did you buy our red balloon and what did you think of it?”

Open and closed questions
Open questions allow the respondent to answer a question with no limitations on what they can say e.g. “What do you like about your current supplier?” A closed question has a limited number of responses to choose from e.g. “How would you rate our customer service?” Very Good, Good etc.

In theory open questions provide you with more qualitative data but they can be difficult to analyse. If you have thousands of responses you will have to go through each one grouping the answers to be able to spot any common themes. Closed questions make it very easy to analyse the data but you could miss out on some valuable feedback.

Piloting the survey
Good practise dictates you should run a pilot survey to test the questions amongst a limited sample before launching it to the general population. Doing this will highlight any problems with the questions and any in data collection and analysis.

Choosing the software
There are literally hundreds of software suppliers to choose from covering all the stages of planning, implementing, distributing and analysing your survey.

Suppliers include:
•    http://www.zoomerang.com/
•    http://www.keysurvey.co.uk/

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If you want to trade on a national level it will cost a lot of money and there will be a lot of big fish out there to compete with. If you get work further afield, great, but my advice would be not to go chasing it too hard too early.

Why…

• Local advertising is significantly cheaper than their national counter parts and a lot more targeted, which leads to…
• Reduced waste. This refers to waste in terms of the people looking at the advert as well as money. If you only supply services to Yorkshire, then having the advert seen in Cornwall is a waste of your money.
• There is much less competition. For example on Google the search term “bouncy castle Nottingham” brings back 37,000 results whereas “bouncy castle” displays a massive 1.42m results.

How…

• Your local British chamber of commerce and business link organisations are gold mines for both business resources and putting you in touch with potential customers.  A good idea is to find out when they have their events to put local suppliers in touch with potential customers and go along. Also research whether they send out emails to local businesses you can advertise on.

• Optimise your website’s SEO for the geographic locations you are targeting.  For example instead of <title>Bouncy castle hire</title> be more specific and use <title>Bouncy castle hire Nottingham, Derby & Leicester</title>
• Directories such as the ‘ic’ or ‘touch’ networks tend to be displayed prominently in localised search engine results. Research the most popular online directories for your area and niche and submit your site.
• With relatively small geographic locations from which to report the news, many local papers are news hungry and if you have an event, promotion, new product, re-launch etc to promote you could get yourself in.
• Put an advert or at least a free entry in the Yellow Pages (both online and traditional book directory) and BT’s business phone book. A lot of buyers still use these to find business suppliers.
• Google AdWords does not have to be a national medium. Use the ‘geographic targeting’ options to only show ads to people in your target area (i.e. no ads shown in areas you can’t supply therefore no wasted clicks etc)
• Buy a list of geographically targeted email addresses from companies such as www.marketingfile.com and use a HTML mail shot to promote your services. (You can find a good article about designing HTML emails here)
• After you finish a job always post the invoice and put in a collection of business cards so they can pass them on to their contact

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When determining which keywords your site should be shown for and how high you should be ranked, one of the variables the search engines analyse are the keywords used in the anchor text.

By using the anchor text in links coming to you from other sites AND the links connecting your site’s pages (which means you have some control over this) the search engines are able to build up a picture of your site’s subject and your ‘authority’ in that field.

Anchor text and SEO
When you link from one page to another in your own website or you link to someone else’s website using non-descriptive terms such as ‘click here’ or ‘find out more’ as the anchor text you are not providing the search engine’s spiders with information about what that page is about. As a result you miss out on taking advantage of one of the most important SEO ranking factors (see what I did there?).

To see this in action follow this link which shows how Adobe tops the rankings for the search term “click here” without a single mention of it anywhere on the page (the same goes for all the sites on the first page).  This is 100% down to thousands of websites using something along the lines of “To download Adobe Acrobat Reader click here”.

Anchor text and usability
Getting in to good habits naming your anchor text also improves your site’s general usability. Research conducted in to how people read online content shows people don’t, they scan. Visitors look for visual cues as to the page’s topic and what they need to do next. Linked text stands out and draws the eyes, but non-descriptive links tell the user nothing and they will continue scanning elsewhere.

Getting the best of both worlds
At INSTA Host when we link to another page we use descriptive keywords for both the reader’s benefit and for our SEO. For example…

“INSTA Host, the award winning uk Host,  is pleased to announce the launch of Windows  Hosting.”

Anchor text tips
When you are linking to a page make sure they are…
- Descriptive
- Short
- Written for the user and not the search engines
- Part of the sentence and not tacked on at the end

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