It’s fair to say that 2011 was mental as far as SEO is concerned. Every week something new would be announced that says “hey guys, do this in order to beat Google” and “you’re doing that still? You’re soooooo January, c’mon, it’s the middle of February now, that doesn’t work!”

It’s enough to make the average man in the street (well, the man in the street with a website and the Internet) to think that it’s absolutely impossible to rank on Google anymore because nerds have taken over. Have you seen “SEO For Dummies” on Amazon? Over 400 pages!! Who’s going to read that!!?? Read the rest of this entry »

Remember Google Buzz? Eh? Remember it? The social network style chatty-thing that was going to be a Twitter-like tool to allow us all to communicate etc.? Use it? Nahh, nor me. Well, you can scratch it off the ‘To-do’ list because it’s gone away, gone the way of the Dodo. As a method of social networking (or whatever it was) it is no more.

Tossed into the rubbish bin like so many other failed attempts to get the masses to interact using a new, more streamlined and efficient platform. Problem was, though, nobody really used it. Read the rest of this entry »

You type into Google what you company does, you don’t find your site on there. You get frustrated, fed up and disillusioned. You’ve probably tried a few things that people suggested, but nothing has worked.

I’ll be honest, there’s a LOT of reasons why Google isn’t putting you on the front page. So this is the first of a series to help you get the results you need.

Here’s the first three things you need to look at.

Don’t be emotional about it, just look at it with a cold hard mindset. If you resonate with any of the points then work out a strategy for changing that aspect.

1. You’re making it hard for Google.

For Google to asses the quality of your site, it needs to be able to ‘crawl’ through your site. Crawling simply means having a good look around. A bit like going into a large hotel and checking out all the rooms.

In the same way that rooms with locked doors and a broken lift would stop you searching the whole hotel, there are many ways you can block Google from crawling your site correctly.

If you want to check if Google is indexing your pages, go into google and search “Site:yoururl.com” for example, if we we’re checking to see if our site was indexed, he would type in “site:CallowayGreen.com” into Google. If it says you don’t have any pages, you need to fix that quick.

2. You’ve got low volume, poor quality backlinks

If you don’t have many sites that link to yours then you are unlikely to rank in Google’s search results.You’ll probably get found for your own company name, but that’s about it.

You need to be consistently building high quality links to your site. If you have the right tools you can check how many links your competitors have and then you’ll have an idea of the work that is ahead of you.

3. Your content is poor!

Google continually strive to get the best content ranked the highest. The reason they do this is that people will get quickly fed up and stop using Google if all the sites they find on their search are poor quality thrown together spam sites.

You may have heard of sites in the past six months that were greatly affected with Google’s infamous Panda update.

My advice is to take that extra time to write higher quality stuff. Your website should be full of information that people can use, learn from, implement and make a decision whether you are the kind of company they want to engage with.

That’s enough for now… Please leave a comment below when you’ve had chance to look at your site.

Way back in the 1970s, Douglas Adams created the “Hitchikers’s Guide to the Galaxy”, a science fiction book that was quite ground breaking. Not only for the style it was written but also for the subject matter it addressed and much of what he wrote still resonates today. Like many historical novels (and dare I say it, The Bible) it actually contains thought provoking views on life and I want to discuss one of those today.

You see, one of the stand-out sections of the book for me is the bit where the white mice (it’s more detailed than that, but you can read it yourself!) create a computer called “Deep Thought” with the sole purpose of coming up with the “Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”.

After seven and a half million years of calculation it cam up with the answer: Read the rest of this entry »

I decided a few weeks ago that I would start taking my fitness seriously.

Sitting at the desk all day is making me very unfit.

I got myself a mountain bike, got myself a helmet, told my wife I would be back in an hour and left to go on my first bike ride in a couple of years.

Two hours later … my wife got a bit worried …

Three hours later she was really stressed …

You see the problem was that I had gone about seven miles from home. As I turned around to cycle back I managed to get a puncture.

Walking back along the canal with my bike in hand I noticed I was getting overtaken by a barge. Those things go pretty slow, so I must have been going REALLY slow. The guy offered me a lift. So I stuck my bike on the front and enjoyed the lazy pace of trundling up the canal.

Why am I telling you this ??

Not sure really…

But i’ll have a go at shoehorning this into a marketing related post.

You see, on the barge, I had time to think and reflect. If i’m honest I don’t do that very often, but it gave me more clarity with why we do what we do with the marketing.

When you have time to reflect on your marketing… SEO is the best place to start.

When you embark on a well thought through and implemented SEO campaign, you’ll start to get more attention and more people coming to your website. That’s when you get the chance to have more communication with prospective clients.

You could have the most amazing customer service in the world. But if no-one can find you, you will never get to practice that service. (I told you I could shoehorn this in).

The SEO Snowball

When we have run SEO campaigns for clients, we’ve noticed that success builds upon success. Almost like a snowball, the momentum keeps building over time. Once clients are in the #1 positions for their main keywords, that runs through onto other pages and keywords.

Sooo… how do you start this snowball moving?

Here’s three quick ideas to get your SEO efforts moving in the right direction:

1. On-site Navigation

You need to make as easy as possible for the search engines to work their way around your site. Make sure that your navigation is not a bunch of pictures, but readable text. Sometimes, just fixing that will have a big effect on your site.

2. Links, Links, Links

It would be great if we just got the content right on the site and then shot up to the first position on Google. It doesn’t work like that though. Google favours the most popular sites that have the most votes (links). How do you get these links? You have to contribute in blogs, forums, and message boards relating to your website. Write articles. Contribute To The Internet.

You need to work out if you have the time to do that, or get someone to do it for you. Doing nothing isn’t an option.

3. Competition

It’s really important to know who your competitors online are. If you don’t know right now, then work out what people would type in to Google to find what you do and see the results. Work out what they are doing well on their site. Check how many links they have to their site. Are they using video on Google? Are they on Facebook?

Only then will you know how much effort you need to put in to beat them.

So, there you go, take a look at those three areas and see how you match up.

If you do decide to manage your own SEO, be sure to make a plan and follow it. If you don’t have the time, give us a call on 0845 0573420

Many people think this whole SEO lark is a bit of a joke pushed by crazy geeks with their ‘dark arts’ learned by spending far too much time on the Internet whilst watching The Wire on their second monitor. It’s true that the bedroom of the common nerd is a smelly place but to say they’re practicing the dark arts is very wrong – they’re just getting involved in standard good marketing practice whilst the rest of the world sneers.

It was Chris that said “There are 13 year old kids who know more about Internet Marketing than many UK company directors” and he’s right. If you’re a company director and your website isn’t a good lead generation tool then you’re probably being beaten by some kid eating pizza which he just picked up from Domino’s. He went to Domino’s in his Fiat Grande Punto Abarth (he’s got money, not taste) which he paid for with cash.

His neighbours, knowing that he doesn’t go to school or college and only leaves the house to pick up fast food, are convinced he’s dealing drugs or downloading porn to sell at car boot sales. But he’s not.

Read the rest of this entry »

Normally I write about how there’s some rift in the matrix at Google or how things in the SEO world are affecting what we do or how you can better leverage social media and stuff like that. That’s what blogs are for – they’re not usually for the venting of personal issues or a rant about things that are annoying me, not on a corporate blog anyway. A corporate blogs should sure just be for things that are specifically “for the company”.

“Don’t let personal and business mix” say the (mostly British) “social experts”. Yeah, that’s in quotes because I’ve yet to meet someone calling themselves a “guru” or an “expert” who I haven’t instantly wanted to scream at right in the face shouting “SHUTTUP! YOU KNOW NOTHING!!”

Oh no, I’m getting anrgy….woooahhh, I’m getting personal, will this affect the brand??? Oh-0h, let’s hope I don’t get too shouty, that won’t do…. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s very rare I sit and watch adverts between TV programs, usually I’m just filling time until Charlie Brooker or Horizon is on, but even I’ve noticed a trend in advertisements these days where they show a bit of a trailer and then say “Google <something>” to find out more. The one I noticed today said “Google number 4″ so I thought I would.

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The SEO newswires have been abuzz lately with the news that JC Penny, a huge department store in the US has been penalised by Google for cheating and using “black hat” SEO techniques to boost rankings for many keywords.  But what did they do and how did they do it? More importantly, how can you ensure you don’t fall into the trap and get penalised yourself?

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I’ve noticed this subject mentioned on a couple of blogs recently and as I’m a typical SEO band-waggoner (is there are word?) then I thought I’d hop right in and talk about it because it’s obviously a hot topic.

What us marketing types are banging on about is the fact that you shouldn’t just be content with getting links from just one place. For example, if you have a blog on blogger then you shouldn’t just be posting a million articles to it expecting all those million links to matter because they won’t. Well, they will, but not as much as if you were to mix them up and get links from other blogs, forums, social networking and the like. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

Read the rest of this entry »