Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

Once you’ve found success, even partially, it’s all too easy to get caught up with the glory of it all. The same can certainly be said when it comes to SEO, and once you’ve reached the top spot it’s often tempting to start putting less effort in. You get comfortable, complacent and think that everything will still pay off, only to quickly realise that it won’t. If you want to see, and keep, success, it’s essential that you stay at the forefront of new SEO techniques at all times.

The importance of keeping up with SEO trends

Things are constantly changing, both online and otherwise, and as such the techniques that work for SEO are constantly on the move as well. People often find that what worked for them before has since failed to yield any results, and it isn’t surprising. Search engines change their algorithms, backlinks become stale, avenues that were previously sending you a lot of traffic now cease to exist… and so the list goes on. All of these things can have devastating consequences on your SEO strategy, making it more important than ever to know what you’re doing.

How to stay ahead of the SEO game

The most important thing you can do is keep learning at all times. Research should be a favourite pastime and you should be able to pull it off with ease, and should know all the rocks to look under to find pieces of gold. New techniques are always being tried out, so make sure you’re one of the first to try by reading up on the area whenever you can.

It’s important to remember that constant learning is a part of all SEO processes. Indeed, it’s a part of most things in life. New discoveries are always being made and new ways of doing things become commonplace, so it makes sense to get there early before your results start to drop. Even professional SEO masters have to keep learning – how do you think they found out about new tips in
the first place?

Or, if that’s too much like hard work for you, you could always get in touch with the experts instead. They’ll know all about the latest SEO trends because it’s their job to be aware of them, so don’t be afraid to ask for some help if you need a push in the right direction.

Your SEO strategy will thank you for it.

As with most things in life, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do SEO. And I’m not just meaning the wrong way that leads to lack of success – I also mean the wrong way in terms of ethics. Unethical SEO techniques can often lead to huge short-term success (note the phrase “short-term”), but if you want to get real results then make sure to avoid the two biggest black hat ideas:

Keyword stuffing

Keyword stuffing is a definite no-no in the world of SEO, and it probably won’t even work. If you fill your content with pointless keywords that are just thrown in without any thought to readability, you’ll instantly be penalised. Search engines don’t like to see too many keywords clogging up a page (they can be pretty clever when they want to be) and can blacklist you in a heartbeat, and not to
mention the poor reception you’ll get from your readers. Even if you do manage to sneak a few keyword-stuffed pages through you won’t gain any business from it because your readers simply won’t stay, and isn’t that the whole point of SEO?

Spamming

A similar concept really, except here we’re talking about spamming the rest of the net rather than your own site. Some webmasters take it upon themselves to post their link wherever they can, even if it’s completely irrelevant to the site or discussion in question. How many times have you seen a post or status comment which is simply an ad or a link to a different site? And how many times have
you clicked? Probably not very often, and if you engage in this practice you’re likely to see yourself banned from the sites you were spamming or blacklisted from search engines.

Of course, this isn’t an exhaustive list of unethical SEO techniques (there are many more, such as creating websites for the sole reason of providing backlinks), but these two are the biggest you need to watch out for. While they can sometimes work in the short-term they won’t pay off in the long run, and when it comes to SEO you need to look at the bigger picture. If you want lasting success that’s the only way it should be, but if you really want to see how it’s done make sure to come to us here at Manual Link Building and we’ll gladly advise.

SEO is one of the most important things that business owners need to be aware of. It can be the biggest single factor in getting and keeping business, because without an effective SEO strategy people won’t even know that you’re out there. People often assume that succeeding at SEO is incredibly difficult, but if you know what you’re doing it doesn’t have to be. There are in fact plenty
of simple things you can do to improve your SEO endeavours without having to break out into a sweat in the process, and here are just a few of them.

• Get on the social networking bandwagon.

This can be incredibly effective at improving your SEO campaign, and it doesn’t even have to feel like work. Make sure that you’ve got accounts with all the big sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Digg, and keep your friends/followers/fans updated with regular content and posts. Of course, you always need to be providing value so they don’t get bored, and if you include links in your posts you’ve got instant backlinks that you know are going to work.

• Write, write, write.

Article writing is essential for SEO to pay off. The old saying that content is king still applies today, and if you’re giving your readers something of value then you’re more likely to gain additional business. Make sure it’s relevant and updated regularly, and always include keywords to appeal to search engines. Sneak some links in there as well, and remember that you don’t just have to post articles to your own site – often, heading to article directory sites such as Ezine can be equally as beneficial.

• Get the SEO experts to do it for you.

For those that don’t have the time or the skills to work on their SEO strategy themselves, paying for the services of a professional company (such as us here at Manual Link Building) could be just the thing. This will be incredibly simple as it completely takes the hassle out, and if you leave it to them to take charge of your SEO efforts you’re likely to see quality results incredibly quickly.

As you can see, SEO doesn’t have to be difficult if you know what you’re doing. These are just a few simple tips that you might want to try but there are many more out there too, and any one of them can make the process of succeeding at SEO far simpler than you ever thought possible.

To succeed at SEO, you have to know what you’re doing. You need to be able to spend the time to learn new techniques and tricks to get your website noticed by search engines, but some people simply don’t have the technical ability, the time or the inclination to go out and do it themselves. That’s where the experts come in.

Why should I trust SEO experts?

When you’re putting your SEO campaign in the hands of the experts you can be sure that you’re getting a service you can trust. They have all the skills and experience needed to really excel, and if you choose carefully (i.e. by seeing what they’ve done for past customers) then you can be sure that you’re going to get results.

Who can benefit from professional SEO help?

There are plenty of people that can benefit from consulting the SEO professionals, and it doesn’t just have to be those that aren’t computer geniuses. Even those that have the skills to tackle their SEO campaign may simply not have the time to devote to it, with their time often being more profitably spent elsewhere. The same can still apply even if you’ve got a team of IT experts behind you – you can outsource your SEO activities while letting your team loose on more urgent projects.

Then there are those that don’t know much about SEO so simply need a bit of help. Everyone does from time to time, and by outsourcing you’re doing the single biggest thing to help improve your business. You may need a complete strategy from start to finish or you might simply need them to take over from something that you’ve already started – whatever you’re looking for, you’ll be able to find the experts to help.

Don’t leave it to chance – outsource to see SEO results

More and more people are catching onto the idea of outsourcing as being an incredibly cost and time-efficient way of doing things. You’re freeing up your staff to work on other things and will even be saving money in the process, for the simple fact that you’re only paying an outside company for the work that they’re doing and not a full-time staff member.

So, if you need a bit of help with your SEO efforts, don’t be afraid to contact the experts. They’ll be able to have as much or as little control as you want and will give you the results that you’ve only dreamt of, so never overlook the possibility of outsourcing if you want SEO success.

SEO Link Building should be at the heart of all businesses. It’s one of the best ways to increase your online presence to gain more visitors and, subsequently, increased profits, but for some people such skills don’t come easy. That’s why it’s often best to consult the experts, and if you’re willing to invest in SEO Link Building you’ll soon see the success that you’re longing for.

Why pay for SEO Link Building?

To some people, paying for SEO link building may seem counter-productive. You want to make money not spend it, right? Well, as the old saying goes, sometimes to have to spend money to make it, and there’s no better way of doing so than on a top-quality SEO link building company.

By paying for such services you’re almost guaranteeing results. You’re consulting people who have experience and skills in the area and that can often be invaluable, so it’s always going to be worth it in the long run. Trying to go it alone can seem incredibly daunting and if you don’t have the skills then it’s going to be impossible to achieve the success that you want, so why not pay for it instead?

It makes sense to consult the experts, and the amount that you’re spending will be more than paid back by the increased profits it can bring.

What to expect when paying for SEO link building

When you pay for SEO link building, you can expect a quality service. You can also look forward to getting results faster than you ever could on your own, and because they’ve got all the skills necessary to succeed you’re bound to get quality backlinks that you can rely on.

They’ll also have the time to spend on your project, and time constraints can be incredibly tough on everyone these days. Even if you’ve got the skills to see your SEO link building endeavours come to fruition you may not have enough time to devote to it, but by paying for the professionals you can expect people that will spend enough time on your project to see fantastic results.

Trust Manual Link Building to help you out with your SEO link building

Here at Manual Link Building, we know how important link building can be to the success of your business. That’s why we give you a quality service to help your site get to the next level, so if you want to experience the benefits of investing in SEO link building for yourself make sure to get in touch to see what we can do.

All companies should have one aim – to get to the top of search results. This will lead to far more visitors and subsequent business than they’d ever be able to get otherwise, and the only way to realise that aim is to have a solid SEO strategy backing them up. But, what if you don’t have the time, skills or inclination to take on board such a project? You consult specialist SEO services instead.

What can SEO services do for me?

SEO services can do an enormous amount for your business. Not only do they have all the skills and knowledge necessary to come up with a perfectly thought-out SEO strategy to lead you to success, but they have the time available to put it into action. They’ll be able to take care of every aspect of SEO (should you wish them to) and will do everything in their power to get you to that top spot, and that can only lead to good things.

Even if you’ve got staff members in-house that know about SEO, it’s still often best to outsource. This is because you can hire them on an as-needed basis to allow your regular staff to work on other things, and that can all lead to increased profits. You may initially think that it’s counter-productive to pay for such a service, but you’ll soon find that the money you make from hiring them will more than cover their fees.

Finding the right SEO service for your needs

There are a lot of companies that claim to be trained in SEO, but don’t believe everything that you read. You need to make sure that they’ve got the skills and experience necessary to do the job properly, and they need to have plenty of happy customers behind them. They should only ever use ethical techniques and should be able to give you quick results, and if you want someone that ticks all the boxes you need to come to us here at Manual Link Building.

SEO – helping your online business thrive

As you can see, SEO services really can help your business to thrive. They can get you to the top of those search results without any hassle on your part, and will be able to everything far quicker and more effectively than you ever could on your own. Why not come and see for yourself? Come to us here at Manual Link Building and see what a professional SEO company can do for you.

We recently have discovered a new kind of back link checker. Gone are the days of pain painstakingly copying each individual back link from yahoo site explorer into excel and then trying to work out random link values.

The team at Big Hit Media have launched their first edition of the Big Hit Media Site Explorer, a smart , fast and simple back link checker.

The difference in this back link checker is, it uses multiple APIS to gather the information, so doesn’t rely on just once source, providing you a comprehensive list of back links.

This back link checker will simply show the root domains from which a site has links from, displaying alongside the number of links from each root domain.

This easily instantly gives us a quick overview of the different links pointing to a site.

This is all nothing new, but it makes life a lot easier to find this information quickly. The added bonus being, it’s easy to cut and paste this information into excel or an email!

View and try the SEO Back Link checker

When you look at setting up any time of business you probably look at marketing costs as one of the first outgoings you will need to spend out on. Whether it is advertising in local papers or getting leaflets printed up, most of us assume that we are going to need to spend something out on advertising. The situation isn’t really very different if you have a website, because you still want to make sure that you get traffic.

However advertising is usually short lived which means that although it can help do the job, it is temporary and so your ongoing costs are more or less constant. For example a local newspaper is usually weekly, so that means to keep up the advertising you probably need to pay for a weekly advert. Costs can soon mount up.

Of course you can build these costs into your overheads however that doesn’t mean that the cost is invisible.

SEO tactics – the key to online advertising success

If you are an online website you can still advertise in the same way – You can pay for banner placements and links from other websites. You can even go as far as adverting in national press if you have a national selling product. However what it shouldn’t do is over write your SEO tactics.

In order to be success you really want large amounts of ongoing traffic. Advertising will not always bring you this so you need to make sure that search engines do. By getting traffic from search engines you know that the people visiting your site already have an interest in what you are selling. This means that the likelihood of them buying from you is much higher. Once you are at the top of your game for your keyword you should find it easier to stay there, this means that you get on going traffic from the search engines with minimal effort. Unlike ‘proper’ advertising which is an ongoing cost.

So can you forget SEO just because you are paying for advertising?

Definitely not! SEO is fundamental to your businesses success and therefore should never be over looked

In what are proving to be exceptionally tough times for the vast majority of businesses throughout the UK, there has never been a more important time to have a good online presence, especially if your business relies on online sales to generate profits.

There is plenty of hype surrounding Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) but what is it all about? This short blog post has been written to give you a brief outline of what this Internet marketing strategy is all about.

What is SEO?

The process of improving the visibility of a website in the search engines, SEO techniques involve improving the positioning of a website on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Generally, the higher a website appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.

The Purpose of SEO

SEO as an Internet marketing strategy involves the consideration of how search engines work and what people search for. A website’s content and HTML may be optimised to increase its relevance in terms of specific keywords. Another key SEO tactic is to increase the number of backlinks or inbound links through SEO Link Building to a website in order to increase its online presence and visibility.

When it comes to running a website many people concentrate on the look and feel of the website itself. They assume that they need a slick looking website in order to attract visitors. Whilst it is true that the look of your website is vitally important, it will impress visitors when they are there but it wont be the reason they visit in the first place.

The fact of the matter is that you need to market yourself in order to let people know you are there. The simple fact is that people will more than likely not stumble across your website by accident. What you really want is to get traffic from people that are searching for what you have to offer.

Increase web traffic with SEO

Drive traffic from the Search Engines

The best way to do this is to get search engine traffic; that way you know that the people that visit your website are already interested in what you have to say. As we all know when you search for something on a search engine you invariably get more than one result. We also all know that the likely hood is that you will only click on some of the top results when you have done your search. Your ranking in the search engine will have a massive effect on the amount of traffic that search engines generate for you.

You can affect and improve the ranking of your website with your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This basically is the steps you have taken to help make your website ‘liked’ by the search engines. There are several steps involved in this process including making keywords are included on your website text, making sure you have plenty of websites linking to your website and ensuring your website is kept updated.

The ongoing practice of SEO

These are just the very basic steps of SEO and there is a lot more involved in making sure your website is as optimised as possible. If you want to generate decent, natural traffic then you really need to work on the SEO of your website. It is also important to remember that your SEO steps are not a one time thing and should be continued through out the life of your website in order to make sure you stay on top.

Click to buy Google News Submissions – £59.99 + VAT

By using Google news to your advantage you can give your website maximum exposure. Google news is viewed by millions of people each day, its news stories are linked to by other sites and the stories are ranked by Google’s very own search engine.

This means that if you can get your news story/press release picked up by Google news you are guaranteeing more traffic.

Google News Submissions

With our brand new Google News Submission product we can guarantee a news story featuring links to your website will be featured on the Google News feed.

Google News Submissions

Speedy pick up with our Google News Submissions

Generally when we submit your news story it will be index by Google within 2 minutes and picked up by Google news in under 10 minutes. All of this is done via our PR3 UK News Website. This site alone is used by other sites to pick up back links and receives over 1300 unique views a day.

Click to buy Google News Submissions – £59.99 + VAT

Genuine in-text Link Building

To stress this is not a blog roll site, it is a page rank 3 website based in the UK. You will be featured on Google news to give your website maximum exposure.

For the best success we recommend a unique article of around 300 words. We can get one of our talented SEO writers to take care of this from you included in the price.

What we need for your Google News Submissions

All we require from you is the keyword(s) that you wish to use (maximum 2) and the links that you want for those keywords.

Restrictions on our Google News Submissions

At this time we cannot accept adult content or gambling websites for this service.

Click to buy Google News Submissions – £59.99 + VAT

In the current economic climate, there has never been a more important time to help improve your online presence.

With all the hype surrounding SEO, many people have yet to get involved with SEO; however, sooner or later they will have to learn about this complex subject.

This blog has been written with beginners in mind, giving them some useful SEO tips to get them started:

1. Fresh content

Keeping the content on your site is exceptionally important in order to help improve your search engine rankings. By adding new and useful information on the pages of your site regularly, this freshness adds relevancy top your website in the eyes of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

2. Getting found in local searches

It is important that you focus on search phrases rather than single keywords. For example, include your location in your search phrases such as, “our Sheffield shoe shop” rather than, “our shoe shop”.

3. Content is king

It is important that you have good, well-written, unique content that is well balanced to attract the search engines whilst reading well for your users.

4. Using links to your site and within your site

Ensure that the links to your site and within your site contain your keyword phrase.

5. Text links

It is important that you use keywords and key phrases appropriately in text links, your domain name and image ALT attributes.

If you are going to be successful at search engine optimization (SEO) on your website then you will need to combine several different strategies. These should include both ‘on page’ and ‘off page’ optimization. This will allow the search engine bots to effectively crawl your website and online profile. One of the main strategies currently being utilised by professional SEO companies and consultants is Link Building.

Link Building Strategies

Link Building is in itself made up of several different strategies. These include Directory Submission, forum posting, article submission, blog posting and social networking. All of these strategies are designed to improve the online profile of any website by spreading links throughout other relevant websites. These links connect straight back to the originating website, so if anyone clicks on them they will instantly be directed to these pages.

Web 2.0 Services

The majority of Link Building processes such as blog posting, forum posting, directories and social networking use Web 2.0 platforms. This means that as well as the central links you will need to use relevant and interesting copy as Web 2.0’s are designed to encourage user interaction. If you are creating a blog post to link back to your website it should contain good quality content and not just focus on keywords. Search engine bots scan for the overuse of keywords as consider this as ‘spam’. This will negatively affect your online profile and could inhibit your chances of achieving good search engine ranking results. Web 2.0 help to ensure that your links are seen as relevant and reliable by search engine bots.

Search Engines Love Squidoo And Other Web 2.0 Properties

Tips for Using Web 2.0 Services

There are a number of Web 2.0 services available including the popular Squidoo Lens. These are a good way of improving your online presence and boosting your website traffic. Squidoo Lenses help your website to be indexed quickly and effectively by search engines. If you have are not sure how to use Squidoo Lens for your off page SEO strategies then you should think about signing up to one of the paid services. Manualinkbuilding.co.uk can provide affordable and effective Squidoo Lens packages that will optimize your Link Building strategies.

You can improve the effectiveness of Squidoo Lens and other Web 2.0 services by making sure you check for ‘dofollow’ actions. This basically means you need to ensure that the website you are linking from allows search engines to crawl through the posts. If a website does not contain a dofollow action then the search bot will not be able to access the posts. This will then effectively ‘hide’ your links and make them useless in terms of ranking result building.

RSS Links

You should also think about using RSS links. RSS is much more effective than the ‘permalinks’ used for regular website linking. RSS is a live link which allows the user not just to link to a webpage, but also to subscribe to it as well. This means that every time the page is updated or changed the user is notified. This type of live feed keeps the link fresh and active. RSS links are much more powerful than a simple static link and can be a useful SEO linking strategy for website owners.

In the modern world when we look at businesses that are successful they all have websites that appear at the top of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. So what do you do if you’re a new start-up business or have only just got a website? The answer is simple…the only way to get to the top of the search engines is by having an SEO strategy.

SEO Information Online

Now the Internet is littered with information about SEO. The many tips and tricks are all useful, but when there is some much information readily available it can become extremely confusing, especially to those that are not fully up to speed with how the World Wide Web (WWW) works. Simply, SEO is all about improving the quality of traffic and volume to your site from the search engines.

Internet marketing Strategies – SEO

Similar to other marketing strategies, SEO is not always an appropriate option. There are many other Internet marketing options that can be as effective for your website. The best place to start out is creating an Internet marketing strategy to drive traffic through optimisation techniques. SEO is a big picture and there are many contributing factors that will help raise your online presence…

Speak to an SEO Expert

Do your research and you will find techniques such as Link Building, Directory Submissions and SEO Copywriting are all part of the bigger picture – for further information on these get in touch with us today on 0161 928 8799.

In the current day and age, when we are searching for a product or service we tend to do so online. Long gone are the days of picking up the local phone book, businesses are going online advertising their products or services and it is becoming hugely competitive. If you are a business owner and want to improve your online presence so that you appear higher on the major search engines than your competitors, you have to consider SEO.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the process and method of improving the quality and volume of traffic to a website from search engines. The theory is that the higher your website ranks on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing with SEO, the more traffic and visitors your site will receive from the search engines.

SEO Tactics

SEO is all about researching how the search engines work and what your potential customers are searching for. In order for your website to rank high on the search engines, it needs to be optimised by editing its content, HTML and coding, to increase its relevance to the specific keywords that your potential customers are searching for.

Improve Your Online Presence, Choose SEO Services

For more information on how SEO can help you, get in touch with an SEO expert today by calling 0161 928 8799 and we’ll be happy to help you reach the top of Google!

If you are carrying out a SEO Site Audit for your website’s competitors it can be useful to find out if your competitors have an XML Sitemap on their site.

One (and the more common) way of finding it is by typing in “sitemap.xml” after the domain name (for example: http://www.manuallinkbuilding.co.uk/sitemap.xml). Often this a method employed during a site audit.

However, with a number of websites, their XML sitemap are often hidden away within the site. You can carry out a Google Search on the website to see if the XML sitemap has been indexed by Google. The query you need is below:-

• site:[sitedomain] filetype:xml

So if you’re searching for BBC’s sitemap, you would go for this search:-

• site:bbc.co.uk filetype:xml

It’s not ideal, for two reasons: firstly it requires Google to have indexed your XML sitemap first of all, which is not always the case.

The second issue – which you will see if you have done the example above – is that a lot of other site’s content (such as RSS Feeds) are in xml format.

Nevertheless, for carrying out site audits, if the first method doesn’t work, then you can do no harm for trying a google search.

Hat tip to @chrismoranuk & @ismepete for tweeting this.

It is essential for any business these days to have a positive online image and to maintain that image.

This is often the first impression you give to potential customers so you need to get it right. Slick web pages, informative content and good advertising will help you to win over customers so that they place an order with you and come back to your site time and time again.

Whilst these factors make for a good business reputation, it can only take one piece of negative feedback or content to destroy that good reputation for good.

Reputation management is a service that helps to ensure your online profile is as good as it can be and that you are giving out the right message to the right audience at all times.

Managing your online reputation

Manual Link Building has been offering its wide range of services to businesses for many years and are experts in the field of reputation management and SEO technologies.

Web users can be extremely fickle and it can only take a few seconds for them to make their mind up about a web site. If they don’t immediately like what they see then they will simply close their browser or move on to a competitor’s website.

It is also important to ensure content elsewhere is up to date, positive and correct. Negative content can also show itself in search results and this can put people off completely from even viewing your website. Such negative feedback or information can damage your company name irreparably and it can take a long time to rebuild your reputation.

Pre-Emptive Link Building you can gain the peace of mind that your reputation is protected and being enhanced to ensure potential customers get a good first and lasting impression of your services and products.

We will monitor the following online media to ensure your business is being represented in a positive light:
Websites

• Social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter etc.)

• Consumer review sites

• Article submission directories

• Wikipedia style sites

• Social Bookmarking and news sites

• Discussion forums

• Blogging communities

Online reputation management can be a real asset when delivered by a professional company like Manual Link Building.

We have the expertise and experience to make sure your target audience is only seeing the good stuff. Let us handle all the finer points of polishing your reputation and company image whilst you get on with running your business. We have been working in this industry for years and have built a strong following with companies just like yours who want to project the best possible image to their clients.

Ordering Reputation Management

Each case has its own criteria so contact us to discuss your online reputation management on 0161 928 8799

The exact way that Google calculates the importance of a page is a closely guarded secret. What we do know are the factors included in that calculation and the estimated importance they are given.

Page Rank

What is Pagerank®?

The factor which has the largest impact on where your page appears in a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is it’s Google PageRank®. Again, the exact way that Google calculates a PageRank® isn’t known. We do however know that it takes into consideration the domain age, the age of the content and, above all, the incoming links to a page. The quality and quantity of these links have the largest impact on PageRank® and are integral to the SEO process. Using these factors Google then calculates the importance of the page and gives it a numerical value between 0 and 10 with 10 representing pages of greatest importance.

PageRank®, though it is very important, is not the only factor which Google uses to decide the SERP position of a page. In addition to the quality of a page’s inbound links, Google also factors in the number of both inbound and outbound links to a page. Google will also give greater importance to pages which are registered with human reviewed online directories such as DMOZ and the yahoo directory.

Are Keywords Still Important?

Keywords, though they don’t have the authority they once did, still have a very big part to play in dictating your page’s position in a SERP. When calculating the importance of your page, Google will take into consideration whether the search term is contained in either the page’s URL, tags or as anchor text. The frequency and density of the search phrase on your page will also greatly influence your page’s position.

There are other factors which do play a part of Google’s calculation. The structure of your site and amount of pages registered to a domain will both be taken into consideration by Google. What will also inform part of their calculation are any negative factors attached to a site. Negative factors might include unnatural keyword stuffing, links to or from undesirable sites or repetitive use of bad language on a site.

Constant improvements in the rankings

The way that Google and other major search engines rank their SERP’s is always being improved. It is worth remembering that their goal is to provide the most useful results from a search term. If your site consistently provides real value to its visitors and you pay close attention to the technical components of SEO mentioned here, then your ranking in SERP’s will certainly rise.

Following numerous customer requests we are introducing some new products to our portfolio.

We are currently testing these products for quality and link acceptance purposes.

Below is an overview. Once we are 100% confident about the products we add them to our main submission package pages.

Fancy helping us out? We may discount our prices for you to help us test our new suppliers – Contact us here

Blog submissions

50 blog submissions – £29.99 + VAT
100 blog submissions – £44.99 + VAT

RSS Feed Submission

50 RSS Feed Submissions – £24.99 + VAT

Press Releases

50 Press Release Submissions – £49.99 + VAT

Forum Posting

100 Forum Posts – £49.99 + VAT

We know that these are not new products to SEO link building but they are new products to us so we suggest you contact us for information

You are an online business, and you have the best website you can afford, with regularly updated content, and lots on offer to your potential customers. But, for some reason, you still don’t seem to be drawing in the crowds. It’s a common problem for so many new online businesses.

Ten years ago, you might have handed out fliers, sent spec letters to businesses, and used your brilliant social skills whilst networking at all of the relevant events. But, what do you do when your client is nothing more than a faceless entity hidden behind a computer screen?

Remember those social skills? Have you tried testing them out on Social Networking sites? No?

Then, there is a big world out there, which you are missing out on.

Social Networking websites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are the cyberspace equivalent of launch parties, book fairs, festivals, conferences and exhibitions, and unlike the real world equivalents, Facebook et al attract millions more potential clients or comrades, from practically every corner of the globe.

Don’t believe me? According to Facebook’s “Press Room”, out of its 400 million total users, 35 million of them update their status every single day. That means that as you sit here reading this, there are 35 million potential customers sitting waiting for you to show them what you have to offer. Twitter only has 75 million users, with a huge 80% of users never having tweeted more than ten times.

However, a user not tweeting does not have to be a bad thing. This is especially so, when you take into consideration that You Tube make up sensation Lauren Luke currently has over 27,000 people following her, whilst Film Production Company Sony Pictures, has just under 57,000 followers. It becomes pretty clear that whilst people aren’t tweeting very often, they are very keen to follow individuals and companies that they trust and/or believe in.

But, how can Facebook and Twitter be beneficial to your company, in terms of Internet Marketing? Quite easily. Facebook and Twitter allow you to talk more directly to your clients/customers, in a way that is more “human”, and casual. This allows them to connect to you on a more down-to-earth level, and makes you feel more like a person, rather than company name.

Social networking is perfect for announcing new product launches or even products that are development. This is good, because it allows them up-to-date information with what you are doing, and they do not have to hunt for the information, something that a lot of people just do not like doing.

It’s also a good place to find out exactly what your customers want, and how they feel about your products. People are far more likely to comment about a product, in a group discussion, that by going out of their way to fill in Feedback forms. It also allows customers to feel like you appreciate them, and that you want to tell them things, and that you want to hear what they have to say.

What is Ecommerce?

Ecommerce, quite simply, is the sale of goods (or services) through the internet, typically, although most certainly not exclusive to, the form of an online, or virtual, shop.

ECommerce is practically essential for a vast majority of businesses in the 21st Century, especially with the rise of the internet, and subsequently internet shopping. There has been an immense rise in online sales over the past ten years, as more and more consumers prefer the comfort and stress-free environment of their own over a busy Saturday morning shopping centre.

However, Ecommerce does not necessarily have to be clothes, books, CDs and the typical things that are commonly perceived as popular online. Almost anything can be sold online, from a professional service to banking, and cinema and gig tickets to holidays.

Whilst there are obvious benefits to the customer, it can be hard to see the benefits to you, as the business owner. The first, and most obvious benefit, is that there is great potential to draw in a much wider-based clientele, rather than simply a local one.

The benefits of Ecommerce

A more important benefit, however, is one that is sometimes not thought of, and that is that fact that your website or online shop acts as your shopfront, theoretically speaking. This means that you do need necessarily require physical premises, which could potentially save you a great deal of money, in both the short and long term on overheads that would have been needed. Subsequently, running an online shop is a great dealer cheaper than an actual shop.

What is SEO, and why is it a Dream Partnership with Ecommerce?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and is absolutely essential for anyone intending to get in on the Ecommerce action. This is mainly because it is SEO that will vastly improve the amount of visitors and will draw in the majority of new customers to your website, and shop. SEO allows Search Engines, such as Google, Yahoo etc to be able to find your website through the keywords that litter your site’s text. This is important, because whether we like it or not, Search Engines are the best and most successful way of bringing people in.

The keywords, of course, need to be relevant, in order to make sure that the crowd the search engines bring in for you are the right crowd that you are aiming at, and that is why planning is key. This is because, if your keywords, collectively, don’t seriously promote your products and/or, the Search Engine will bring you customers that aren’t really interested. This means that whilst your traffic might be sky high, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the traffic is willing, or wanting to purchase anything that you are offering them.

Using Ecommerce and SEO together

Used effectively together, Ecommerce and SEO can make your business the success that it deserves to be. SEO will draw the customers in, and Ecommerce will allow them to buy safely, and conveniently, at their own leisure, whilst being incredibly cost-effective to you.

SEO Manchester

If you have an Ecommerce site and are looking to sell more of your products or services, feel free to contact this Manchester SEO today via email or by calling 0161 928 8799

All of us as website owners and search engine marketers have always wanted to know “How exactly Google sees our website”.

This information can be found in Google support tries to help webmasters diagnose errors and enhance their website’s search engine visibility.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google webmaster tools lists the preferences on how website listings are handled.

Before you can start with any of these you will to sign up for your Google account. After signing up log into the following page https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

Verification of Ownership

You will have to verify your ownership of your website that you would like to control using Google webmaster tools. You will have to enter the URL of your website and follow the instructions provided to verify the ownership of your website.

This can be done in two ways, one is by uploading a blank HTML file with a specified name and the second method is by pasting a Meta tag provided by Google webmaster tools in the Header part of your homepage. Once you upload your blank HTML page or add the Meta tag, click verify.

This will allow Google to verify quickly that you are the authentic owner of the website that you are trying to control using Google webmaster tools.

The Overview

Once verified, you will be able to see your website’s profile in the Google webmaster tools control panel. You just need to click on the URL of your website whose profile you would like to view under the Manage section.

This will take you to the overview page. You will find highly crucial information on your website that will give you great insights into the nature of your website’s traffic. You will also find links to specific webmaster tools in this section.

Diagnostics Tools

The function of these tools is to tell you whether there are any errors in your website as seen by Google when it crawled your website. You will normally find errors such as 404 errors, pages not indexed by Google robots.txt and other indexing issues.

Some of the common types of errors can be listed under the headings such as HTTP errors, URLs not followed, URLs disallowed by robots.txt, not found, URLs timed out, and Unreachable URLs. To ensure that your website is without any error, you must regularly check your diagnostics reports.

Statistical Tools

Google has amazing statistical tools that you can use to improve your marketing efforts. Google webmaster statistical tools include the following:

Top Search Queries

Every webmaster would like to know the top search query through which visitors get in to their website using Google Search. You will be able to see list of keywords for which the highest number of visitors came to your website.

One of the most important pieces of information that you will find here is that your position in the SERPs for a particular keyword. There may be minor variation in the indicated number and actual position however, this will get better with time.

What Googlebot sees

This is one of the best ways of learning how other websites link to your website . You can find three sections here.

• Phrases used in external links to your website
• Keywords in your site’s content
• The actual content on your website in terms of keyword density

Crawl Stats

Here you will be able to learn about your website’s pagerank strength. You can see your pages categorized in terms of low, medium, high and not yet assigned. Most often you will find your pages categorized under low but do not get discouraged.

Another useful piece of information here is pagerank information of specific pages, which is updated on monthly basis. This is one of the best ways of measuring the effectiveness of your specific Link Building efforts.

Index Stats

Here you can find advanced Google queries on your website that used some search operators. This includes the following operators site:, link:, cache:, info:, related:, etc.

Subscriber Stats

This particular tool will help you find the status on your RSS feed subscribers. This is one of the new additions to the toolbox and is certainly useful when you are using feed management systems.

Links

This is where you can learn about your website’s internal and external link popularity status. Though this tool is a very limited in terms of the information provided, it will certainly be helpful information when you are trying to work on your website’s online exposure.

Google Sitemaps

This is one of the basic and oldest Google webmaster tools. In fact all the Google webmaster tools were built around Google sitemaps tool.

This will help you to manage your sitemap files that are Google specific. You will be able to upload XML files, which will help Google to crawl your website completely.

Tools

The tools area in Google Webmaster Tools is the most resourceful sections. You can find the following tools under this section:

Analyse robots.txt

Robots.txt is a protocol meant for googlebot, which will tell Google how they should go about crawling your website. You can give instructions to googlebot in this file. You can control the crawling of Googlebot to the desired parts of your website as well as block the search engines from crawling certain parts of your website.

Analyse robots.txt tool will help you check the validity of your robots.txt file. Even a small mistake in this file can cost your website’s ranking dearly. So better take advantage of this tool to ensure that everything is in place.

Site Verification Management

This section will help you change the options on your site verification. You will also be able to secure your website. This is highly helpful when you are using a SEO company to handle your webmaster tools. Once you terminate their services with them, your information will still be available to them. Using this site verification area, you can block unauthorised entries to your website.

Crawl Rate

Here you will be able to get Google’s activity on your website and their indexing frequency. If you really want to benefit from this section, you will have to select adjust crawling speed feature. Here are few useful tips on how you can benefit from the activity graphs.

You will have to remember here that info will be limited to a 90 day span. You can see variations in the graph based on your website update frequency. Check the graphs closely and compare it with your website activity. You will also be able to measure the effectiveness of your Link Building efforts. You can see spikes in the graph if your Link Building efforts have really been effective. The aim here is to make sure that Google is visiting your website frequently and interacting with your website actively. This is important to get new content in your website indexed fast.

Set Preferred Domain

If you do not want your page rank and the effectiveness of your Link Building efforts diluted between www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com, you need to tell Google which will be your canonical URL or which will be your preferred URL.

This will have definitive impact on your website’s ranking. Google will display the right URLs based on what you have instructed it in this section. Never ignore this section; not many people realize the importance of this section.

Enhanced Image Search

One of the ways of enhancing your website’s online presence is by getting yourself included in the image search. When you select enhanced image search you will be able to gain control on labeling images in your website. You can also make use of Google image labeler to help improve image relevancy.

You can find Google image labeler at http://images.google.com/imagelabeler.

Remove URLs

If there are pages removed in your website in your latest update, you should remove those pages from Google indexing. You will be able to do this easily using the remove URLs tool.

To conclude

When you invest enough time understanding each of the tools available in Google webmaster tools, you will certainly be able to benefit a great deal. All these tools after all are FREE for use.

Google even allows users to download important information regarding their website. You can set automatic download schedules to have your statistics downloaded. The best download schedule suggested is once in 60 days as Google provides information once in 90 days. When you set 60 days download, you will have overlapping data to interpret the information better.

The data gathered here can be used in multiple ways to gain valuable insights regarding your website’s online performance.

If you need any further advice on Google webmaster tools and the way it can help you interpret your site data please do not hesitiate to contact us via email or call on 0161 928 8799. We are Manchester SEO and Manchester Web Design specialists

Many people start off trying to do their own SEO but often no matter how hard they try, their sites do not rank well or the sites rank well but SEO takes all their time and all their other jobs are neglected

If this is the case with you, maybe it is better to consider employing a SEO company to do the work for you. With so many SEO companies out there, you can’t complain that you have no choice. Or is it the opposite – so many companies but very few reliable and transparent?

It is wrong to say there are no reliable SEO companies. Yes, there might be many scam SEO companies but if you know what to look for when selecting a SEO company, the risk of employing scam companies is reduced.

here is a list with some points to watch for when choosing a good SEO company:

Do they promise to guarantee a number 1 ranking?

If they do, you have a serious reason to doubt their abilities. It is a well known fact that no one can guarantee a #1 ranking in Google, all we can do is follow the principles of SEO and use our experience of working within your industry.

Get recommendation from friends, business partners, etc. Word of mouth is very important for the credibility of a company.

Google the company name.

If the company is a known scammer, chances are that you will find a lot of information about it on the web. However, lack of negative publicity does not mean that the company is great, nor do some subjective negative opinions mean that the company is a scam

Ask for examples of sites they have optimised.

Happy customers are the best form of promotion, so feel free to ask your potential SEO company about sites they have optimised and references from clients. If you get a rejection because of confidentiality reasons, this must ring a bell about the credibility of the SEO company – former customers are not supposed to be a secret.

Check the PageRank of their own site.

If they can’t optimise their site well enough to get a good PR (over 3+), they are not worth hiring.

Ask them what keywords their site ranks for.

Similarly to the page rank factor, if they don’t rank well for the keywords of their choice, they are hardly as professional as they are pretending to be.

Do they use automated submissions?

If they do, stay away from them. Automated submissions can get you banned from search engines.

Do they use any black hat SEO tricks?

You need to know in advance what black hat SEO is in order to judge them, so getting familiar with the most important black hat SEO tricks is worth before you go and start cross-examining them.

Where do they collect back links from?

Back links are very, very important for SEO success but if they come from link farms and other similar sites, this can cause a lot of trouble. So, make sure the SEO firm collects links from reputable sites only.

High price does not guarantee high quality.

If you are eager to pay more, this does not mean that you will get more. Just because a firm costs more DOES NOT make them better SEO’s. There are many reasons for high prices and high quality is only one of them. For instance, the company might work inefficiently and this is the reason for their ridiculously high costs, not the quality of their work.

Cheap is more expensive.

This is also true. If you think you can pay peanuts for a professional SEO campaign, then you need to think again. Professional SEO companies offer realistic prices.

Do they offer subscription services?

SEO is a constant process and if you want to rank well and keep on like that, efforts are necessary all the time. Because of this, it is better to select a company that includes post-optimization maintenance, than get a company that pushes your site towards the top and then leaves you in the wild on your own.

We have tried to mention some of the most important issues in selecting a SEO company. Of course, there are many other factors to consider and each case is different, so give it some thought, before you sign the contract for employing a SEO company.

Our UK SEO Company offer full transparency on all elements of SEO and we also do not tie you into a minimum term contract

You cannot say fairer than that – Our results do the talking – not our sales people

HTML 5 is still being finalised at time of writing but any SEO company worth their salt (or your money) will be looking ahead at how HTML 5 will impact SEO.

We have been monitoring the progress and development closely and feel comfortable enough to publish some interesting points we have found.

HTML5 and the implications for SEO

Whilst it is true that the changes and the new features in HTML 5 will impact our web developers and designers more than the SEO, HTML 5 will still mean changes in the SEO techniques and strategies we use.

What’s New in HTML 5?

HTML 5 follows the way the WWW has evolved in the last 5-10 years and includes many useful tags and elements. At first glance, it might look as if HTML 5 is going in the direction of a programming language but actually it isnt – it is still an XML-based presentation language.

HTML 5 is not very different from HTML 4. One of the basic ideas in the development of HTML 5 was to ensure backward compatibility and because of this, HTML 5 is not a complete revamp of the HTML specification. Fear not – you will not need to start learning a new language from scratch, merely expand the scope of your current skills.

How the Changes in HTML 5 Will Affect SEO?

As SEO geeks, we are interested mainly in the changes in the HTML 5 specification, which will affect our work directly. Here are some of them:

• Improved page segmentation.

Search engines are getting smarter and there are many reasons to believe that even now they are applying page segmentation. Basically, page segmentation means that a page is divided into several separate parts (i.e. main content, menus, headers, footers, links sections, etc.) and these parts are treated as separate entries.

At present, there is no way for a webmaster to tell search engines how to segment a page but this is bound to change in HTML 5.

• A new <article> tag.

The new <article> tag is probably the best addition from a SEO point of view. The <article> tag allows to mark separate entries in an online publication, such as a blog or a magazine. It is expected that when articles are marked with the <article> tag, this will make the HTML code cleaner because it will reduce the need to use <div> tags. Also, probably search engines will put more weight on the text inside the <article> tag as compared to the contents on the other parts of the page.

• A new <section> tag.

The new <section> tag can be used to identify separate sections on a page, chapter, book. The advantage is that each section can have its separate HTML heading. As with the <article> tag, it can be presumed that search engines will pay more attention to the contents of separate sections. For instance, if the words of a search string are found in one section, this implies higher relevance as compared to when these words are found all across the page or in separate sections.

• A new <header> tag.

The new <header> tag (which is different from the head element) is a blessing for SEO experts because it gives a lot of flexibility. The <header> tag is very similar to the <H1> tag but the difference is that it can contain a lot of stuff, such as H1, H2, H3 elements, whole paragraphs of text, hard-coded links (and this is really precious for SEO), and any other kind of info you feel relevant to include.

• A new <footer> tag.

The <footer> tag might not be as useful as the <header> one but still it allows to include important information there and it can be used for SEO purposes as well. The <header> and <footer> tags can be used many times on one page – i.e. you can have a separate header/footer for each section and this gives really a lot of flexibility.

• A new <nav> tag.

Navigation is one of the important factors for SEO and everything that eases navigation is welcome. The new <nav> tag can be used to identify a collection of links to other pages.

As you see, the new tags follow the common structure of a standard page and each of the parts (i.e. header, footer, main section) has a separate tag. The tags we described here, are just some (but certainly not all) of the new tags in HTML 5, which will affect SEO in some way.

For instance, <audio>, <video> or <dialogue> tags are also part of the HTML 5 standard and they will allow to further separate the content into the adequate categories. There are many other tags but they are of lower importance from an SEO point of view and that is why they are not discussed here.

Currently HTML 5 is still an emerging technology. When more pages become HTML 5-compliant, search engines will pay more attention to HTML 5. Only then it will be possible to know how exactly search engines will treat HTML 5 pages.

The mass adoption of HTML 5 won’t happen soon and it is a safe bet to say that for now you can keep to HTML 4 and have no concerns. Additionally, it will take some time for browsers to adjust to HTML 5, which further delays the moment when HTML 5 will be everywhere.

Once HTML 5 is accepted and put to use, it will be the dominating standard for many years to come and that is why you might want to keep an eye on what other webmasters are doing, just to make sure that you will not miss the boat when HTML 5 becomes the de-facto standard for HTML and SEO web design.

A 301 redirect is the most search engine friendly method of moving a web page or website from one location to another. It’s not that hard to do and should preserve your search engine rankings for particular pages and search terms.

If you have to change file names or move pages around through an architecture change, a 301 redirect is the safest option. The code “301″ is read as “moved permanently” by all search engines.

A useful guide of 301 Redirect methods

Below are a Couple of methods to implement URL Redirection using a 301 redirect

PHP 301 Redirect

<?
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.mynewdomain.co.uk ” );
?>

ASP 301 Redirect

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<% Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently” Response.AddHeader “Location”,”http://www.mynewdomain.co.uk /” %>

ASP .NET 301 Redirect

<script runat=”server”>
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(“Location”,”http://www.mynewdomain.co.uk “);
}
</script>

IIS 301 Redirect

• In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect

• Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”.

• Enter the redirection page

• Check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”

• Click on ‘Apply’

ColdFusion 301 Redirect

<.cfheader statuscode=”301″ statustext=”Moved permanently”>
<.cfheader name=”Location” value=”http://www.mynewdomain.co.uk “>

JSP (Java) 301 Redirect

<% response.setStatus(301); response.setHeader( “Location”, “http://www.mynewdomain.co.uk /” ); response.setHeader( “Connection”, “close” ); %>

CGI PERL 301 Redirect

$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect(“http://www.mynewdomain.co.uk /”);

Ruby on Rails 301 Redirect

def old_action
headers["Status"] = “301 Moved Permanently”
redirect_to “http://www.mynewdomain.co.uk /”
end

Redirecting an old domain to a new domain.

To redirect from one domain to another we use the .htaccess method.

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain.

The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mynewdomain.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

REMEMBER – replace www.mynewdomain.co.uk in the above code with your actual domain name.

Two important point to note are

• the .htaccess method of 301 redirects works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite module enabled.

• Your FTP client may not show the .htaccess file as it is treated as a system file. You will need to use the file manager section of your server control panel to delete the file if required.

Redirect to www (.htaccess 301 redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code and it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com.

The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website ( the same directory where your index or default file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^mydomain.co.uk [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.co.uk/$1 [r=301,nc]
Please REPLACE mydomain.co.uk and www.mydomain.co.uk with your actual domain name.
Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

How to perform 301 Redirects on HTML pages

If you need to redirect HTML web pages, the techniques used depend on the server you are hosting on.

If your site is hosted on a Linux Server, use the .htaccess method described above.

If you host on a Windows server, use the IIS Redirect method mentioned above.

If you need any onpage SEO advice or web design assistance please do not hesitate to contact the team at Gareth Hoyle SEO and Web Design – Web Design Manchester and Manchester SEO