Aiming for the Top-Spot On Search Engines? Time for a Rethink

If your business is involved in SEO, chances are you share the same goal as everyone else. That being, to climb right to the top of the rankings to the number-one position.

It’s no secret that the higher the ranking, the more likely you are to win the lion’s share of traffic. With three-quarters of web users now refusing to look beyond the first page, this really is the place to be. 

But what if we were to tell you that fighting tooth and nail for the top-spot isn’t always the best way to go? What could be more important than doing whatever it takes to claw all the way to that prestigious number-one spot?

Particularly if this is the main goal of your SEO strategy, it could be time for a rethink…and here’s why:

It Might Be Impossible

First and foremost, actually getting yourself to the number-one position could be impossible. There’s every chance that whatever your niche and specialist area, you’ll always be outperformed by a bigger rival. If their SEO spend is literally 100X yours, you can’t expect all the strategy in the world to give you the upper hand. You could throw every penny you have at your SERP performance, but it might not be enough. Painful as it may be, it’s sometimes necessary to accept the top-spot for certain key words is completely out of reach.

SEO is Unpredictable

A strategic SEO campaign should be all about solid performance and measurable improvements. The SEO landscape is just too unpredictable to have such a stubborn and specific goal in mind. You spend more than you can afford boosting your SEO strategy, you finally hit the top-spot and you’re happy. Only then to watch Google alter its algorithm and drop back to your prior fifth position. If you can reach a strong position and hold onto it, you’re golden.

Position Zero is Better

The interesting thing about position-zero is that not only is it better, it’s also more achievable. Check out a few position-zero pages and you’ll see how comparatively few come from the biggest brands and businesses out there. If you can offer something that perfectly answers the question being asked, you’ve every chance of hitting this prestigious beyond-top-spot. Lists, top-tens, detailed snippets – all great for attracting Google’s attention. If planning on campaigning for the top-spot, try campaigning for position-zero instead.

Hedge Your Bets

Last up, campaigning to hit the top-spot for one particular search term means investing heavily in this one term. In the meantime, search terms and keywords of enormous value could be denied your time, effort and attention. You may dominate the rankings with this key term of interest, but what about the rest? What if you end up on page two or three for a bunch of other major keywords and search terms? Rather than attempting to rule the roost with just one or two terms, think about hedging your bets with a more widespread approach to your SEO strategy.

With So Many Self-Proclaimed Experts Online How Can I Find An SEO Consultant I Can Trust?

With so much misinformation online about what constitutes good SEO practise, finding the right SEO consultant to drive your business to the next level can be a real minefield.

You might think you can only lose money through employing the wrong ‘expert’ – and that in itself is bad enough. But what can also suffer too, is your reputation.

Enlisting the services of an SEO consultant who uses dubious or unethical techniques can do more damage to your business than by you not having a website in the first place. The worse case scenario being that the ‘fallout’ could be catastrophic.

So do make sure you choose a top quality SEO consultant – one that can prove his or her worth by showing you genuine testimonials from real people, together with real life case studies of businesses they have helped.

I’m always amazed when I come across websites who use people’s initials in front of testimonials and no company name. They smack of being made up. After all, why wouldn’t the CEO of a genuine company willingly give a glowing testimonial to a professional consultancy and allow their name to be used for this purpose? It defies logic. Please don’t fall for the explanation that “we do not provide testimonials as our clients’ details are confidential.”

Another warning sign to watch out for is someone who uses all the latest jargon or buzzwords in their pitch to you. So much so that it’s overkill. Could it be they are being deliberately vague or evasive by using words which sound like they’re related to the marketing industry, only you’re not sure what it all means for your business?

Another thing to beware of, do they talk too much about their SEO credentials and marketing solutions, without really taking the time to understand your business first? Do they talk too much in general? A professional SEO consultant will lead with the questions when they first meet with you. But they will also spend a long time listening to your answers and learning about your business before offering suitable and bespoke solutions that should make perfect sense to you.

And finally . . . their prices . . .

How straightforward and transparent is their pricing system. Will you have to pay a monthly retainer? How easily can you cancel the contract? What guarantees can they provide that they will achieve all they promise?

These are just a few indicators to watch out for when you are interviewing prospective SEO consultants to work with you in developing your business. Another good indicator is your gut reaction. If you get bad vibes about the person or company that is presenting to you, then just say no. You don’t have to justify your reasons.

Better that way round than to have to hire another SEO consultant to put the first one’s mistakes right.

How Employing The Services Of An SEO Consultant Can Win You More Local Custom

If attracting more local customers to your business is important to you, then an SEO consultant could help you achieve your goals faster than you might think.

Let’s say you’re running the type of business where local custom is vital to you. In fact, it’s the lifeblood of your business – because 100 per cent of your custom comes from within a five-mile radius of where you are based.

To illustrate the point, let’s say you run your own driving school based in Newbury. You need your driving school to feature in the top search engine results for driving schools in Newbury. So whenever someone types: “driving schools Newbury”, into their search box, you want your company to come out top of the pile (or at least on Google’s first page).


We know for a fact that most people who conduct global searches won’t venture past the first two pages of search results. In a local context, however, being returned among the top 10 results is even more crucial.

If our driving school business does not appear on the first page of Google (i.e. the first 10 search listings) when a potential customer types in “driving schools Newbury”, then more than likely, business which could have gone to our driving instructor will go to somebody else.

Of course there are many other considerations with keywords too. A person wanting to learn to drive might not use our standard search term. She might use: “learn to drive Newbury”, “driving instructors Newbury”, or “pass my theory test Newbury”. We are assuming in all cases that the location will be an essential part of the search term as anyone wanting to learn to drive will want a service which is local.

It’s vital that our business owner thinks like a customer rather than a business owner. So what steps can our driving instructor reasonably take to ensure that his driving school business can compete with his local rivals?
Find out what keywords/ search terms his customers use most frequently.

Use Google’s Keyword Tool or Wordtracker which offers a 7-day free trial (great for determining long-tail keywords strategies).
Using these specific keywords and search term suggestions push his website up the rankings.

One of the benefits of ranking highly in the search engines for local companies is that those people searching for your product or service are more likely to be ‘primed to buy’ than those who search globally. People who search globally could be looking for information or making price comparisons, but those who actually enter a specific location can be considered ‘qualified buyers’.

It’s well worth spending time researching your customers’ online behaviour patterns so you can plan your marketing strategies accordingly. Don’t they say that “time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted?”

If you’d like some assistance with SEO techniques that will help more customers find you rather than your competitors, you can trust an experienced SEO consultant to drive your website into pole position.

6 Ways You Can Write Your Way To Website Success (And Keep Panda & Penguin Happy!)

Since Google Panda, and more recently, Google Penguin arrived on the scene and began targeting low quality website content, duplicate content, and blatant spam, many website owners have found it difficult, if not impossible to keep up with the almost constant changes that have occurred in the search engine giant’s ‘jungle’.

While some website owners who genuinely believed they were offering ‘quality content’ to their visitors, have found themselves penalised – with little or no idea of where they went wrong.

Sure enough you do come across websites and articles where the content is poorly written and where the copywriter has repeated the phrase they want to rank for in just about every sentence. This does not make for readable or informative content and understandably, will reflect in poor rankings. This is in direct conflict to what any professional SEO consultant would advise.

So what can you do ‘content-wise’ to curry favour with Google and all its complex minutiae?
One of the best things you can do, is to focus on creating unique content for your visitors and thus adding value to your website.

You can do this through:

Writing ‘how-to’ guides which you can give away as PDF downloads in return for your visitors’ email addresses. Alternatively, if you are running a membership site you could choose to make your guides available to members only if you prefer.
If you have a corporate blog, start writing posts on a regular basis – daily if possible.
If you don’t already have a business blog start one.
Build microsites (a separate space dedicated to a particular aspect of your business, or featuring a stand-alone product or service).
Develop infographics – a way of showing complex information through eye-catching graphics. Infographics are great because they are more likely to be shared among peer groups, or on social media sites.
Create weekly press releases. Because editors are busy people what tends to work well nowadays is submitting a list of bullet points rather than a complete story. Try it for yourself.
If you produce great unique content on a regular basis, then (at the time of writing), you will generate more quality links, improve your page rankings and attract more visitors to your website.

If you’d like professional help with link-building activities that will keep Google’s ‘little helpers’ happy, your expert SEO consultant will be on hand to assist you. Simply get in touch for a no-obligation chat about improving your website’s page rankings.

If You’re Not Happy With The Way Your Company Website Is Performing . . . Kindly Read On

If you’re in business then you need a website that works well for you. But building the website was the hard part right?


It’s all to easy to harbour the “if I build it they will come” mindset. After all, commissioning a website isn’t cheap. Or maybe you designed one in WordPress yourself. And from what you can gather everything looks great.

But if people (potential customers) don’t know your site exists or where to find you, you could be waiting a long time for your first visitors. So all the resources you invested (time and money) putting your site together, could be wasted.

You see, a website isn’t something you can create and then leave to its own devices. Least not if you want it to be successful. If you want it to rank well in the search engines – which of course you do. Else why would you bother spending money on one?

But the good news is, with consistent effort and input, your website can do better. Much better. If you’re not sure you have the time to spend on ‘wooing’ Google and the other major search engines by working on something called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), then perhaps you should consider engaging the services of an SEO consultant to fix it for you.

An SEO consultant will take a good look at your website, find out about your business, your targets and objectives. Then he will put together a plan of what needs to be done. More than that, he will actually undertake the work for you.

What you don’t want, is an SEO consultant who will tell you what you need to do then leave you to it. These people know full well that you won’t have the time to execute their plans – it’s money for old rope.

So make certain you choose an SEO consultant who will not only carry out the work necessary to propel your website into the top echelons and keep it there, but also the consultant whose services come will a full and hassle-free guarantee of satisfaction.

Not all SEO consultants are created equally so make sure the one you choose comes with top testimonials too.

A top SEO consultant’s services will more than pay for themselves over time and you should begin to see a return on your investment in as little as a couple of months.

There’s no point is wasting good money on a website that’s going nowhere, so make sure yours is heading for the first page of Google, with input from a leading SEO consultant.

 

How To Boost Your Online Sales

An online business, like any other business, is always going to experience sales peaks and troughs. Sometimes the down periods will be owing to market fluctuations beyond your control, but more often there are some simple areas you are neglecting or overlooking which, if rectified, could help to boost your sales immeasurably. Whether you choose to hire an SEO marketing consultant to develop your marketing strategy, take steps yourself to improve your website functionality or hold special promotions, there are plenty of things you can try:


Website Design: To convert visitors to your website into paying customers you need to give them a positive user experience. This means it needs to be designed in such a way that it is easy to navigate, isn’t too cluttered with unnecessary and confusing imagery, and has a quick and simple payment process. If you don’t have any of the above, you are unlikely to get repeat business and this is where most companies get the majority of their sales from.

Product Range: The list of products on your website should come with clear and simple information on aspects such as their specific features, whether they come in different variations and how much they cost. Also, it helps if your product range is focused on one specific area. If you try to offer too many different kinds of products it can be confusing for customers and may also cause problems when it comes to SEO.

SEO Content: There aren’t many online companies these days that won’t be using SEO in one way or another – and there is a good reason for this. Identifying the right keywords and using these to boost your search engine rankings is a proven way to increase traffic to your website and win new customers. If you are unsure how to implement an SEO strategy, hire an experienced SEO consultant who will be able to get you up to speed with the latest trends in SEO, research the market for you and generally get you on the right track.

Targeted Email Marketing: In addition to the above, you should never overlook the effectiveness of a well-planned email marketing campaign. You should always organise your mailing list into categories of clients so you can target emails with certain product promotions to those who are most likely to be interested. A good product promotion or online sale is useful for providing a quick sales spurt if you are going through a particularly slow time.

Pay-Per-Click: If handled correctly, pay-per-click advertising services, such as Google AdWords, are a great way of getting new customers to your site in a relatively short space of time. You have to be prepared to put a certain amount of your marketing budget into this (so work out how much you can afford to pay per click) but the results will often speak for themselves so it’s worth looking into if your sales team are having trouble generating new leads.

SEO Consultants: Learning to Avoid the Bad Ones

SEO, or search engine optimisation, refers to the process by which a company can improve the visibility of its website in search engines, leading to more visitors and therefore hopefully increased profits. One of the jobs of an internet marketing company is to understand how search engines work so they can use SEO methods, such as identifying certain keywords and editing the content of your site and its html coding accordingly, to improve your search engine ranking.


However, bringing in a consultant will of course cost you money so it’s not a decision you should take lightly or rush into. You want only the best, as shoddy SEO can do more harm than good to your company.

To help you out, here are some hints on how to avoid the many unreliable SEO consultants operating today:

Where is the money going?: Before you sign anything, a reputable marketing company should be able to provide you with a detailed budget of where all the recommended outlay for the development of your SEO strategy should be allocated. Some companies will claim they are ranking you highly in search engines purely by using SEO methods such as keyword placement, which is free, when actually they are using pay-per-click to increase the visibility of your website, which is a different thing entirely. If a consultancy is not prepared to outlay all the costs then stay away from it.

Beware the unsolicited approach: Any consultancy that has to resort to sending out SPAM emails to drum up customers isn’t worth your time. You ignore all those emails from companies trying to sell you diet pills or ‘genuine’ Rolex watches, and you should treat such messages from marketing companies in the same way. After all, if they use this somewhat unprofessional method to get business for their own company what do you think they will propose to do for yours?

Unrealistic promises: Be wary of any internet marketing company making claims that sound too good to be true: they probably are. For example, don’t go for a company which is happy to guarantee you a number one Google rating very quickly. As any good consultancy knows, done right, SEO takes time to take effect so you have to exercise a certain amount of patience.

Are they above board?: Try to check out the background of a consultancy you are thinking of hiring. Have they previously operated under any other names, or do they have multiple aliases? This could be a sign that they have something to hide, or their past dealings haven’t exactly reflected favourably upon them. Do they own ‘shadow’ domains, which can channel users to a site using deceptive redirects, or have they in the past had any domains removed from Google? These are all things you should check out before you even consider hiring them.