Posts tagged SEO Tools
5 Website Essentials for Most Effective SEO
Nov 10th
SEO is an essential tool for the success of your website (unless you’re Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg!). Yet while SEO ‘gets them there’, your website has to ‘keep them there’. If your ultimate goal in undertaking an SEO strategy is to make more money for your business, make sure that your site has these five essentials in place while you’re undertaking your SEO campaign! More >
How to Beat a Behemoth SEO Competitor – Final tips
Mar 30th
Beating a well-established Google number 1 in their own niche isn’t easy … but it is certainly possible. The greatest crime would be not to try …especially when we’ve given you so many awesome tips for doing it! Here’s the last of the bunch.
Yes, it can be done...
1. Build some unique, authority content
I once worked with a company that sold doorknobs, lever handles, knockers and locks, etc. One of the biggest traffic drivers to their site (thousands of visitors a month, for quite a niche business) was an authority piece on cleaning brass items. The company did an extensive amount of research, and put together a comprehensive 2,000 word guide to cleaning brass door furniture with household items. People just keep coming for this sort of content – it needs to complement your product or service and truly aim to help people. Don’t think about word limits when you’re building this content … you’ll end up with just another of the hundreds of pieces of mediocre content on the web.
2. Always use anchor text
Rather than saying ‘Visit www.yourbusinesswebsitehere.com.au for great deals on business websites’, say ‘Keep researching deals on business websites now’. People … and Google … understand the intention a lot better!
3. Get personal with database marketing
This is a big task, but definitely worthwhile. Create an email database with as much information about each recipient as possible, and then use it for targeted marketing.
4. Get personal with a blog, a Facebook Page, a Twitter account …etc
Social media creates a far richer face to your company than just whether you’re in the number 1 or number 5 spot on Google’s front page. This added dimension has flow-on benefits for SEO too, though – the greater your visitor count, the higher your ranking. And the more you interact with customers, the more people are likely to link to your website from their own.
5. Get an expert on your side
This is one of the most important things to remember. SEO is no longer an amateur’s game, and if someone ranks at the top of Google for their search term, it’s because expert web marketing help put them there. If you’re going to compete on a level playing field, you’ll need to call in the professionals as well!
By the way, the only reason tip 5 wasn’t at the very beginning of the article set is that we thought it might stick in your head a little better back here … and it is the most important SEO technique to remember.
How to Beat a Behemoth SEO Competitor – The Big List continued
Mar 29th
One of the greatest pities in the SEO world is when a great company fails to optimise their site because they feel they can’t compete with another large company that has more online experience, more Google Juice, and a bigger website. It’s a pity not only for the company itself, but for the general public and potential consumers who may miss out on the option of having a stellar product! Today we continue our look at how you can actually beat a big SEO competitor. Even the mighty must sometimes fall…
1. Don’t compete on price
It’s the lowest common denominator on the web. It’s tempting to think that if you offer a cheaper product than your big competitor, you’ll eventually siphon off all their customers, link popularity, etc. Not true. In many cases, you just end up being seen as the cheap alternative to the ‘good’ product. Being at the top of Google is an automatic ticket to being seen as a ‘trusted’ brand, according to surveys. Being cheap, and lower down, just makes you seem ‘safe to ignore’.
2. Look first to thyself
Sayeth the God of web marketing to his true believers! Make sure your offering is great, that your web design is awesome, that your customer service is in order, before you engage in a full-scale assault on that top Google ranking.
3. Spy on your competitors … to create a point of difference
It may sound sneaky … but it all depends on how you use the information. Copying your competitors tactics will not usually help you beat them. As Ries and Trout (the 27 Immutable Laws of Marketing) suggest, it is better to be first than it is to be better. However, if you want to know how to market yourself as different to potential customers, you need to know what makes you different. Which means knowing what the customer experience at your competitor’s business is like.
4. Ask what your customers thought about transactions
People LOOOVE being asked what they think! And this tactic doesn’t only endear your customers to you … it provides valuable information about improving your business for the future. There may be a tiny piece of the puzzle that your competitor has mastered, but you’ve so far missed completely. Implement a ‘Feedback’ form on your website, or get in contact with people who have had orders delivered via email and find out what they thought about the transaction. It works on eBay!
Keep watching for more ideas from the big list for beating those SEO behemoths at their own game!
How to Beat a Behemoth SEO Competitor – The Big List of Underdog Tactics
Mar 26th
Sometimes an SEO campaign seems hopeless. Much like at Kokoda on the Owen Stanley track, your larger competitor outnumbers you in staff and resources. They seem healthier and more experienced … but if you have the guts and determination, and use a little ingenuity in your SEO and general web marketing strategy, it is certainly possible to beat them! Today we start our catalogue of tips for beating a seemingly unbeatable SEO competitor.
Not such a mammoth competitor after all!
1. Persistence
This is the first thing you need to remember as you launch into an assault on the top position. If you only half-finish an SEO campaign, you waste all of it … not just half. Be prepared to go the distance – know that it is possible!
2. Know your market
In some cases a ‘competitor’ may not truly be competing with your business. If you have a slightly different offering, aim to be at the top of Google for the search terms that best describe your business. Know your unique selling point, and exploit it to the max!
3. Use review sites to boost your business name
Ask your customers to leave reviews of your business on well-respected review sites. If you’re in the tourism industry, Tripadvisor is the big name – but every industry can use sites like www.productreview.com.au. Please avoid the temptation to use review sites to denigrate your competitor(s)’ reputations, though! Keep it clean, people.
4. Don’t forget Google Local
Make sure you use your Google Local profile to the fullest extent possible. Add all the information you can Add your prices in Google Local as well – so many people use the internet for price comparisons, and may simply pass over your business if getting a price is too much like hard work. Price isn’t always the determining factor in supplier choice for the majority of people, anyway.
5. Don’t forget Google Local Reviews!
These may be one of the first things that prospective customers see – Google Local results often show up very high on the results listing, and click-throughs are a lot more evenly spread for these ten results. Get your satisfied customers to leave reviews here to start boosting your traffic.
Stay tuned – we’ll be looking at more ways to beat a behemoth SEO competitor in the coming days.
5 Acceptable SEO Techniques to Learn From the Black-Hatters
Feb 22nd
One thing that few self-service style SEO guides make clear is the distinction between white-hat and black-hat tactics. SEO is a tool that can be used in a variety of different ways … so while a fork can be used to pick up food, it can also be used to stab somebody. Google is trying to avoid being stabbed with the forks they hand out, in the form of the reward that their algorithm provides to different sites! However, every current black-hat technique started out as a legitimate way for Google to differentiate between sites for relevance. So how can you get back to basics, and safely use those ‘black-hat’ style techniques?
Black and White Hat SEO are opposite sides of the same thing...
1. Hide your text
Black hatters use hidden text for nonsensical keyword stuffing. Legitimate sites can still get the benefit of any keywords that may be located in hidden text, but without cluttering the page itself, using JQuery effects like mouseovers to make text appear, etc. Here is a legitimate example (text in the question marks).
2. Mis-spelled terms
It is a popular black hat technique to try and rank for misspelt versions of popular terms, for example, ‘credtit report’. If you have a common misspelling in your industry, define it somewhere on your page, and let visitors know the correct version.
3. Grow your own farmed links
Create a network of related blogs in house, each focusing on a niche within your company or industry. A single person should be able to manage four or five, still very professionally.
4. Pay for your links
But not in the standard black hat way – donate to charitable organizations or community organizations that have a ‘Sponsors’ page with followed links.
5. Do some brand jacking
Do you have a legitimate tale of disappointment from a corporation? People love to complain, and they love bad news, and they love to hear about how terrible a place is before they do business with them. It is a legitimate purpose – just don’t overdo it, your site will develop a negative ‘aura’!
WordPress All-in-One SEO Pack Plugin – Not Replacing Web Marketing Anytime Soon!
Jan 19th
It’s fairly easy to come across DIY stuff on the web. Things like the WordPress All-in-one SEO plugin, sites where you can develop your own personalized website for free, other places where you can upload and share files. Advertising makes it possible for just about everything to be free on the web … but is it as good as the version you pay for? Today we’re looking at the all-in-one SEO plugin from WordPress … comparing its capabilities to an actual SEO or web marketing firm.
WordPress SEO Pack screenshot
In the red corner, weighing in at 14 pounds … WordPress plugin!
The name might be accurate in a WordPress setting (for example, this plugin may have consolidated several other WordPress plugins into a single one), but calling it an all-in-one SEO pack, even in light of all the other DIY tools there are available out there, is a big leap! The plugin simply gives you a platform to enter your title, meta description and meta keywords. It’s useful for bloggers without HTML knowledge or editors, but is a tiny tool in reality.
Here’s what you can get other automated tools for in the web marketing field that the WordPress plugin doesn’t do:
- Page index checker
- Search engine rankings report
- Link popularity checkers
- Tools for suggesting keywords (although the quality is invariably dubious!)
In the blue corner, weighing in at several hundred pounds combined … your SEO team!
It’s easy to see which is going to win in this match up. In fact, I’m no longer sure if it was fair to compare them in the first place … sorry about that 
. When it comes to the benefit of humans over automated tools, there’s just no fight. Instant knockout … go to the pub for the rest of the night! Humans can:
- Determine keywords that are truly relevant to your business
- Build links that are relevant as well as ones that check the boxes (Pagerank, followed, etc)
- Actually write content! This is a big part of SEO, unfortunately the WordPress plugin can’t do this for you.
- Test and assess what’s working in a campaign
- Too many other things to list … get in touch with an SEO specialist!