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The New Face of Social Media

Wed, 29 May 2013 09:51:11 +0100

The importance of social media in search engine optimisation (SEO) has been recognised for a number of years and many brands make sure that they include social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter into their marketing mix.

Of course, there are numerous social networking sites on the internet but what site should SEOs be looking at to stay ahead of their competitors and ensure that they have a proactive, effective presence on? At NESEO, we think you should be looking to include Pinterest into your social media plans!

Pinterest is a pinboard-style website that allows users to share photos by creating and managing different pinboards which can be entitled things such as events, hobbies and favourite things. Brands can also utilise Pinterest and create boards including events, products and even a staff pinboard where you can showcase who you have working within your company.

Pinterest was launched in March 2010 as a closed beta. In February of this year, Reuters declared that Pinterest had 48.7 million users. So, if you’re not using Pinterest for your business, can you really afford not to? Especially when you can use Pinterest to improve your company’s SEO.

From an SEO perspective, there are a number of features that you can utilise on Pinterest to your advantage to improve your overall presence on the SERPs. Here at NESEO, we’ve examined the top five things to bear in mind when using the photo sharing website to advantage your search engine optimisation.

1. Make The Most of Your ‘About’ Section
The ‘About’ section offers you 200 characters to describe your business and you can use this space to include one or two well-chosen keywords which are natural to the copy and don’t appear forced. There is also a specific section for including your website’s URL, make sure you include this. Additionally, you can also link to your other accounts including Twitter and Facebook from here.

2. Link But Don’t Expect Authority
Pinterest’s re-pin links did used to be “dofollow”, however, last year the decision was made to follow the lead of other social networks and change to “nofollow” links. Although these links will not pass over authority, it is still a good idea to include links back to your website from your Pinterest account. If you are a business selling goods this can be especially beneficial. If you’re a florist, you can add images onto your pinboard of the different bouquets and floral arrangements on offer in your business. By the inclusion of a link, you are more likely to increase your brand awareness and drive traffic through to your website which should result in conversions. If you add links, avoid shortening them as Pinterest has been known to mark shortened links as spam!

3. Engage With Users Through Content
As with all social media, you will want to engage your users with informative, interesting content. Create, and source, visual content for your Pinterest page but avoid constantly putting out images with the sole purpose of gaining sales. This is likely to disengage users from your page and limit your visibility and brand awareness with users as a result of this.

4. Link Build Through Pinterest
Although you can’t directly link build through Pinterest, it does build relationships with followers who may already like your Pinterest page and the things that you are pinning. This in turn will make it easier for your to build links at a later date. If the Pinterest user loves what you’re doing on the social network channel, it’s highly likely that they will be willing to give your business a link from their website.

5. Keep Track Of Your Competitor’s Pinning
If you’ve just joined Pinterest for your business, then your competitors may have followed suit or beaten you to it. Pinterest has a source feature which will allow you to look up a competitor via their domain and see the images that they are sharing. By harnessing this feature, you will be able to determine not only what content your competitor is sharing but additionally who they are following and also who is following and interacting with their Pinterest page.

Why not have a look at NESEO's Pinterest page?

How To Perform Keyword Research

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:07:24 +0100

Keyword research is one of the most important, valuable and high return activities that you can carry out in SEO. If you’re ranking for the wrong keywords, you can see your website fall down the SERPs, however, get it correct and your website can be soaring to the best SERPs. It’s important to remember when carrying out keyword research, that it’s not the amount of visitors you’re aiming for but on getting the correct ones to the website.

How much is your keyword worth?
In this instance, we’ll consider a fictional florists business. It’s important to understand the value of the keywords you’re targeting for your SEO strategy. The keywords that visitors to your website search for are usually accessible to webmasters through the utilisation of keyword research tools, however, these tools can’t reveal directly how valuable it is to receive traffic from those terms. Do you make more sales from “rose bouquets” than you do from “tulip bouquets”? To understand the value of a keyword here are four simple steps from NESEO:

You need to assess whether your keyword is relevant to your website’s content. If you target a keyword, is their information on your website which will support this for your visitors coming onto your website? If so, will they be satisfied with the information/ products that they find? Is the traffic likely to convert into sales? If so, then you’ve got a suitable keyword. If not, then you need to consider a different keyword or make some changes to your website to ensure that your keyword selection is represented which should rectify this problem.

Once you’ve selected the keyword you want to target for your business, you will want to put it into your chosen search engine; Google is the most prominent and so it’s a good idea to search here. By doing this, you’re seeing what competition you’ve got out there and how hard you will find it to rank for that keyword. Can you see paid for adverts at the top and right hand side of the organic results? If so, this is an indicator that the keyword you’ve chosen is a high value keyword resulting in an extremely profitable and directly conversion-prone keyword.

By running a sample campaign on Google AdWords you can test traffic for your keyword if your website isn’t ranking for it. A florist could try this method for “daffodil bouquet” and see how much traffic is being converted. In Google AdWords, select the “exact match” option and direct the traffic to the daffodil bouquet page of the florist’s website. Monitor impressions and conversion rates over a duration of at least 2-300 clicks!

You can now take the data from your sample campaing to analyse the exact value of the “daffodil bouquet” keyword. If your advert resulted in 5,000 impressions (people seeing your advert) which then caused 100 people to convert through to your website and in turn three of which bought boquets, or other products, resulting in £300 (yes, those are expensive bouquets!) then each visitor for the keyword is worth £3 to your business. The 5,000 impressions you garnered over a 24 hour period could result in a click-through rate of 18-36% with a number 1 SERP. This then in turn indicates that your keyword could mean 900-1800 visits each day at £3 each!

The Importance of Facebook in SEO

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:43:59 +0100

Have no confusion, search engine optimisation (SEO) does take into account social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Facebook, as the leader in the social media industry, shouldn’t be ignored when you’re looking to improve the SEO of your company’s website.

Social media signals began to play a part in search engine algorithms in December 2010 with actions including likes on a page sending a social signal to the search engines. If your competitor has more likes and interactions on their Facebook account than yours, this will be sending out a signal to Google and other search engines that their website has more influence and relevance than yours. Every time your competitor gains interactions on Facebook, the signal to the search engines is getting stronger. It’s not just likes, however, that send out signals about your website. When your website’s URL is posted out by Facebook users to their friends, another signal is created and as with likes the more this happens, the more the search engines are factoring this into account when they’re looking at where your website should be sitting within the SERPs.

When you’re looking at harnessing your business’ Facebook page for SEO purposes it’s important to note that it’s not just the content itself that matters in improving the ranking position of your company’s website. The search engines do, and will, take into account the freshness of your postings. Even if your Facebook page contains incredible content, if it’s old and the page is generating little traffic and interaction then this will be taken into account the search engines will look for fresher content and websites that are being updated more often. It can be a difficult ‘line to walk’ in not only pleasing the search engines by offering fresh content but not disparaging the actual users of Facebook and the fans of your page by sending out too many updates which can seem spam-like and are guaranteed to get Facebook fans hovering their mouse over the unlike button on your Facebook page.

It’s also worth noting that you can carry out SEO on your Facebook pages to improve the position of your page on search engines including Google. Firstly, ensure that the name of your page is short and relevant to your company; if it is too long users are less likely to give your page a Facebook like, however, if you’ve chosen a good name you’re more likely to generate links which Google will take into account. Utilise the About section of the Facebook page and include keyword-rich, naturally written content that gives users information about your business. To generate further likes, ensure that your page has a custom URL which will make it easier for visitors to find and like your page. This is easily set up through the account options of your page although your page may have to reach a certain number of likes before Facebook will instil upon you this ability.

There are two ways of gaining links for your Facebook page which Google and other search engines will take into account. The first is by getting users to like your page, once they’ve liked it will appear on the user’s own profile and as pages are public on Facebook this then means that the search engines can see these links and will use these to push Facebook pages up higher in the search results. To optimally do this, you need to ensure that your brand’s Facebook page has interesting, engaging content which users will naturally want to be connected to and so ultimately like. You may need to spend some time working on your Facebook page, but in our eyes this will be time well spent.

The second way of generating links on your Facebook page is by ensuring that your website links to your social media account. This is an excellent way of promoting your account to visitors. There are a variety of plug-ins available for Facebook to install onto your website to fulfil this purpose, however, it’s worth noting that these plug-ins don’t have links to your Facebook page that search engines will be able to read so if you do choose to use one, you should additionally create a link yourself within your website.

Improving the SEO of your Facebook account will not work miracles on its own, it should be incorporated into your SEO plan, however, it’s clear that you certainly shouldn’t side-line Facebook from your search engine optimisation plans.

NESEO’s Top 5 Tips for Link Building

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:13:58 +0100

Links, and gaining links, are a vital part of SEO. Even if you’ve created, or had created, a fantastic website and have optimized it with relevant and strong keywords you’ll no doubt find that your new website is buried in the depths of Google (for this article, we will refer to Google as the main search engine), or another search engine’s, results pages. What’s missing? The answer is links to your website.

Links from other websites to your website , also known as backlinks, offer a recommendation in the ‘eyes’ of a search engine that your website is not only trustworthy but also authoritative and contains strong content. This has the effect of raising your website’s position in the SERPs and improving the SEO of your website. Link building should be a constant in any SEO plan but what are the top five tips for carrying this activity out?

1. Quality not quantity
Quality not quantity may be something that gets repeated eternally, however, it is still imperative. If your website accumulates a large amount of backlinks from untrustworthy sites, Google can and will penalize your website. When you’re searching for links, ensure that the website you are going to request a link from is not only trustworthy but also has a good page rank. Additionally, you will want to ensure that the website’s content is relevant to your own website. If your website sells pet supplies will a website selling car supplies be relevant?

Additionally, when guest posting, it’s better to get one high quality blog post from a reputable website as opposed to gaining 100 blog post opportunities from low quality websites.

2. Make Your Content Engaging

If you are requesting backlinks, you need to make sure that your website is link-worthy. There’s no point wasting your time by asking for links when your website isn’t up to par. An adage that is commonly referred to in SEO is, “content is King”. If the visitors to your website don’t find the content engaging or informative then they will leave your website immediately resulting in a high bounce rate. A high bounce rate will indicate to Google that your website offers a bad user experience and Google will drop your down its rankings. Ensuring that you have strong content on your website will keep visitors on your website longer signalling a good user experience and if you have interaction buttons such as a like or tweet button on an article they may even click on that sending Google a further indication that your website should rise in the rankings.

3. Mix Up Your Backlinks

When you are requesting backlinks, consider requesting links to different pages within your site’s navigation. The homepage is the most important part of your website from an SEO point-of-view, however, to avoid raising a red flag with Google you will want to try to gain backlinks to inner pages of your website as well as your homepage. Your content is within the inner pages of your website so if all of your backlinks point to your homepage, Google is likely to question why you haven’t gained backlinks to content including blog posts, videos and inner pages which are more likely to be naturally linked.

When you’re considering internal links, you should spend some time ensuring that all of your keywords are aligned and pointing to the right pages. This will make it easier for Google and your visitors to navigate through your website.

4. Get More Social

Social media is important to SEO. If you have Twitter, Facebook and Google+ then you should make sure that you are using and updating them. If you want to speed up the time it takes to manage your accounts, there are plenty of plugins you can utilize and there are ways to connect your accounts to automatically share the same status. Getting user engagement on social media platforms shows search engines that users are finding your content engaging and relevant and this will be taken into account in your SEO. There is also the additional benefit of increasing your brand awareness and getting more visitors to your website.

5. Vary Your Anchor Text

When you are requesting backlinks, if all your backlinks have the same anchor text this will raise a red flag from Google. If all your anchor links utilise the same keyphrase, it doesn’t look natural as websites would naturally not all choose to use the same keyword in their link to you. Vary your keywords and anchor links to show Google that you’re not trying to forcefully rank for specific keywords and that instead you’re pointing users in the right direction to your website.

Does off-site blogging still have a place in your SEO campaign?

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:09:45 +0100

We have all spent ages writing and sourcing content to post off-site to the tried and trusted blogging forums but since Google’s latest Algorithm update, Penguin, we are being advised that we should avoid blogging. So what is the truth? Does off-site blogging still have a place in the organic SEO world?

First things first…..the recent Penguin update did indeed hit many generic blogging sites, many bloggers sites and indeed many blogs. Many of which, as we will have all heard many times now, were immediately treated as spam. Hence the nick name of the spamming update. Let’s be fair here this is a good thing as there were far to people out their dumping shoddy content stuffed with keywords on to dodgy sites. For those of us that took an ethical approach to SEO (or what was termed White Hat) it was riling that in some instance a really poor site would rank for a valuable and competitive keyword that had no logical justification to do so. At the end of the day it is the customer (googles that is) that suffers. Hence the need for Google to find a way to deal with this….so along comes Penguin.

So where does this leave the blog?

It does still have a place and it can still help as part of a SEO campaign. However, the rules have changed. There are still some useful and valuable sites out there for posting your content. The key now is to make sure that the content pass’s the Penguin test!

Our top 5 on how to pass the Penguin test.

1. Avoid keyword stuffing

2. Make the content look and feel natural and relevant

3. Avoid direct match keyword links back to your site.

a. Ie If your target keyword is ‘cooking apples’ do not link back from this keyword. Instead find an alternative non target term to link back to the site such as ‘when you cook your apples’

4. Use your keyword within one of the Heading Titles. H1 is better than 2 and 2 is better than 3 but…….this needs to look and feel natural. If your topic is about ‘Where to source Cooking Apples’, then perfect. Keyword secured in H1. However if the topic is ‘How to make apple crumble’, then there is no place for your keyword. Look to incorporate it in one of the other Heading Titles. Remember this must look natural.

5. We are still advocates of offering links to other non-compete sites such as Wikipedia. Not for our keyword but for some content relevant term, so in this instance it might be ‘maggots’ or even ‘apple crumble’

There are more but the key really is about making all your content, even your blogs, rich, relevant, informative, interesting and most of all not spammy.

Google Penguin

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:01:49 +0100

We have all heard about Google's most recent Algo update....Penguin or the spamming update. So what is all the fuss about and how will this effect you?

This latest update from Google is designed to filter out some of the 'trash' from the rankings. To those of us that continue to adopt robust, consistent and quality white hat techniques, then we have nothing to fear. However, for those that have been adopting less scrupulous methods to climb the rankings, now is the time to start to worry.

Our top tips on what to do and what not to do.......

1.	Avoid duplicate content
2.	Avoid keyword stuffing
3.	Don't load pages with irrelevant content and/or irrelevant keywords
4.	Avoid cloaking or disguised redirects
5.	Ensure links from articles off site are authorised, relevant, unique and of good quality
6.	Avoid pages just for search engines
7.	Avoid hidden text and/or hidden links
8.	Design and complete the content for your pages for the primary user....not the search engine
9.	Avoid ALL black hat (spamming) techniques
10.	Ensure all content is not only unique and relevant, but also well written.

Much of the above should be obvious. Google is just looking to ensure, where possible, that the right sites appear for the right keywords at the right time. As much as this is about the web site owner it is also about Google's customer journey. Google wants to improve the quality and relevance of search returns for their customers. If your site is active, relevant, informative, authoritative, well thoughtout, well designed, well maintained and well hosted, then this should all be good........

Top 5 SEO tips

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:30:58 +0000

Everyone has their opinion when it comes to what's good and what's not good SEO. The only thing that is for certain when it comes to SEO is that no one can prove for certain that they are right but you sure can spot when something is wrong.

We treat each of our clients needs uniquely....the SEO strategy for client A is likely to be slightly different then client B. When it comes to listing a top 5 or a top 10 then the same thought process needs to be considered. What is a good fit for one will not be a good fit for all. Enough of the disclaimers! What do we consider to be the most important 5 elements for effective SEO?

1. Good quality, unique, relevant on-site content

2. A well structure, well designed, easy to use and navigate website

3. No duplication

4. No broken links

5. Freshness

We have listed our top 5. All of which focus on site. To have a complete effective SEO campaign there are many off-site factors that need to be incorpated. However, we are great believers in getting the site fit for purpose first. We have all heard the saying about polishing a turd!

Happy New Year

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:19:20 +0000

Happy New Year from NeSEO

To start off 2012 we're wishing you all a very happy new year and we'd like to tell you a bit more about our SEO services. What better way to start the new year with a fresh SEO campaign for your website? At NeSEO, we are specialists in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and over the last 7 years we have delivered bespoke SEO campaigns to our clients and successfully achieved countless number 1 spots on search engines. Our clients operate in diverse market places, including travel, leisure, retail and aviation and as a result of our hard work, they outrank companies like Kuoni, Virgin Holidays, and Halfords.

If you want higher rankings and more sales leads but don’t have the time or in house resource to handle your search engine optimisation, our fully managed SEO service is the ideal digital marketing package for your business. We'll help you:

o Attract more sales leads / online sales

o Compete with major brands and competitors

o Create an online marketing strategy that’s deliverable

o Maximise your website for high conversion rates

The first step to an effective SEO strategy is research. Research is key in understanding the market, the current website standings and analysing the competition. This research will judge how the site needs to be improved in order to begin to rank on search engines. The research will then highlight the important things that need to be changed in order to kick off with your SEO:

o Keyword strategy - Keywords are at the heart of all SEO. In the analysis, we combine company services, products, strategy and the data from search trends and look to marry up potentially high converting keywords from the company side to search engine stats about what potential customers are searching for. After all there is no point ranking top of Google for something that people are not actually searching for!

o Content strategy - Content is king. We will look to produce quality content that Google and other search engines can get their teeth stuck into. Content is all about relevancy, each site needs to demonstrate the subject matter that it is looking to rank for, this then needs to be rolled out site wide across every single page.

o Onsite SEO changes - Onsite SEO is effectively everything that a visitor or a search engine robot will see on any particular page of a website. This includes everything from headings, meta data, alt tags and much more that we will manipulate within the code of the website in order to make the website more friendly and relevant to both search engines and the visitors to the website.

o Offsite SEO changes - Offsite SEO is largely about links and brand management. Google uses a voting system to determine how popular any particular website is and then determines how that stacks up against the competing websites for any particular keyword. This voting system is essentially built on one-way links pointing to your website from relevant and good quality external websites. So in essence, the more quality backlinks you have the better you will rank but this has to be done in a calculated and strategic way in order to look natural and organic.

o Analyse - Using our very own custom tools we analyse everything that is going on with each website at any given time and report on trends, changes and strategy adjustments.

o Refine - Using the analysis, we stay proactive and make on-going changes to our strategy to continually improve a websites rankings constantly. We do not stop when we hit target, nor do we aim low!

To start planning your SEO campaign for 2012, contact us on 0844 245 9160 or send us an email at info@neseo.co.uk

Keeping Website Content Fresh in 2012

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:41:05 +0000

Keeping Website Content Fresh in 2012

With Google announcing last month that they have made significant improvements in the ranking of fresh content, it’s now more important than ever to keep your website up to date with fresh and engaging content. The search engine giant announced in November that this would now have an impact on roughly 35% of searches. Updating your website on a regular basis, whether it’s through a blog or adding new pages, is important not only for SEO purposes, but it gives the customer a reason to continue visiting your site. Of course, it will also give you the edge over your competitors; if they only offer stale and static information, your target audience will go to you for something new and different. All in all – Google loves it, visitors want it and you need to provide it!

Keeping your Blog Fresh

Content freshness doesn't mean that you suddenly need to overload your site and blog with content, but it is something that you should stongly take into consideration if you are serious about SEO. How can I keep my site up to date you ask? What on earth can I find to talk about? It can be a struggle sometimes to continuously come up with new and interesting topics but it’s worth remembering that it doesn’t have to be anything too extravagant, sometimes short and sweet is better. First thing's first though, if you don't have a blog, you need one! If you do have one, when was the last time you updated it?

Here are some things you may want to consider for topics:

o New product releases

o New technology

o Relevant news in your industry

o Career opportunities

o Testimonials and comments

o Competitions and offers

o Interviews

o Top 10’s and lists

o Images and videos

You don’t need to publish every day, but a well maintained schedule will be your best bet for fresh content. If you're a large company you'll more than likely have enough resource and information to publish daily. If you're a smaller business, you can start by publishing a couple of times a week. A website that offers fresh and enaging content and often will also be very likely to get bookmarked and shared on Facebook and Twitter. Social media will play a big part in your sites freshness success as you can incoporate a Twitter feed and integrate Facebook to your home page. Your existence on various social media platforms will also result in a high level of traffic to your site, if you have a social media strategy in place that is.

Find out more about our blogging and social media services at NeSEO.

How Google+ is Changing Search

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:28:09 +0000

How Google + is Changing Search

When Google announced that its algorithm now takes social media into account, it made perfect sense that Google themselves would try their hand at social networking. And so they introduced Google +.

Since establishing itself in the social world, Google has slowly rolled out updates to how Google+ and +1 has an impact on search results. Here are 3 ways in which Google + has most recently had an effect on search:

1. Google+ Content Appearing as Site Links in Search Queries

Content that has been published on Google+ is now starting to appear in the Google SERPS. Along with the 'Add to Circle' buttons, these Google+ posts have started to appear in Google’s organic search results for some Google+ business accounts that have been approved for Direct Connect. These appear for both Google+ users and non-users. In other words, even if searchers do not have a Google+ account they will be able to see Google+ results. You can apply for Direct Connect here and this will make sure you are prepared when this functionality reaches all brands.

2. Google+ Profile Appears in Search Results

Google+ profile photos and bylines are also beginning to appear in search results. Searchers who click through via the photo or content will be sent to the profile in question which will deliver only the content authored by the owner of that Google+ account. This can be an effective tool for employees to help extend the reach of the company’s online presence.

3. Google News is Spotlighting +1 Content

If content has received a +1 by a Gmail or Google+ user, that piece is eligible to appear within Google News. Staying up-to-date in your industry and then +1’ing interesting content will result in your Google+ profile picture and name showing up next to the content you publicise. This will bring more traffic to your Google+ profile and in turn, your website.

If your business isn’t on Google+ yet, what are you waiting for? If you are, add us to your circles!

Google Algorithm – 10 New Changes

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:54:24 +0000

Google Reveals 10 Algorithm Changes

Every year, Google makes around 500 changes to its search algorithm and on Monday, it revealed 10 more. Google rarely publicises its changes but chose to reveal these as they are ‘less susceptible to gaming’. Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts published on the Google’s Inside Search Blog in-depth details about the 10 algorithm changes and here they are:

1. Cross-language information retrieval updates

For queries in languages where limited web content is available (Afrikaans, Malay, Slovak, Swahili, Hindi, Norwegian, Serbian, Catalan, Maltese, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, Welsh, Icelandic), Google will now translate relevant English web pages and display the translated titles underneath the English titles in the search results. Clicking on the translated titles will take you to pages translated from English into the query language.

2. Snippets with more page content and less header/menu content

This change helps Google to choose more relevant text to use in snippets. The search engine is now more likely to pick text from the actual page content, and less likely to select the text that is part of a header or a menu.

3. Better page titles in search results by de-duplicating boilerplate anchors

When generating a page title, Google looks at a number of signals, one being the anchor text in links pointing to the page. It was found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so it will concentrate on the titles that are relevant to the pages content.

4. Length-based autocomplete predictions in Russian

This reduces the number of long and sometimes arbitrary query predictions in Russian. Google will no longer make long predictions in Russian.

5. Extending application rich snippets

Google’s rich snippets for applications allows users who are searching for software applications to see details like cost and user reviews, within their search results. This will be available more often.

6. Retiring a signal in Image search

Google decided to revisit signals that were launched in the past that no longer appear to have a significant impact. In this case, they have decided to retire a signal in Image Search relating to images that had references from multiple documents on the web.

7. Fresher, more recent results

Announced at the start of November, the search engine has made a significant improvement in the ranking of fresh content. The change impacts around 35 % of all searches and determines the appropriate level of freshness for a specific query.

8. Refining official page detection

This is an adjustment on how Google will determine which pages are official and rank these even higher.

9. Improvements to date-restricted queries

Google has changed how it handles result freshness for queries where a user has chosen a specific date range. The aim is to ensure the user gets the most relevant content for the date they specify.

10. Prediction fix for IME queries

This will improve how Autocomplete handles IME queries (which contain non-Latin characters).

How do Social Media and SEO Work Together?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:46:52 +0000

The Importance of Social Media and SEO Marketing

SEO and social media marketing can be intertwined to create a successful online presence for companies. The evolution of social media and SEO creates a number of exciting opportunities to receive more visibility on the web and it is therefore important to align your social media strategy with your search engine optimisation efforts. As with all SEO activities, it’s essential to focus not only on what the search engines will see but on quality and user experience. If the copy on your website or blog is interesting then you will reap the benefits of social media. Providing unique and quality content will go a long way on social media, with friends, families and colleagues sharing your links afar. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are extremely powerful tools for link building and having active user communities will bring a high level of trust to search engines. Engaging in discussion on forums, blogs and other types of media allows you to not only interact with customers but keep content fresh and updated for SEO purposes.

Social Media and SEO Combined

Social media is constantly on the rise and this means that search engines have no option but to take their content seriously. Sites like Facebook and Twitter generate a huge amount of internet traffic every day in online news and discussions. As well as increasing your online brand presence, there are 2 ways in which social media and SEO work together:

Generating Natural Links

Using Twitter as an example, the majority of tweets contain a link and taking into account that more than 100 million people use it with 230 million tweets being sent a day, it’s a great place to get seen! Promoting your content on Twitter encourages your network to read your content as well as allowing them to share it via their network in the form of a ‘reTweet’. The more times this is shared, the more authority your brand/company will possess in the eyes of search engines. Similar with Facebook, in that when you publish your content, others can share it with their network. This will tell the search engines that this content is valuable in some way and therefore others should have access to it.

Drive Website Traffic

One of the major roles of SEO is to drive targeted traffic to your website and social networking compliments this, allowing businesses to connect with an audience on a one to one basis. Creating a well optimized profile will be the main gateway to your website so when posting content or blog posts, just provide your fans with snippets to tease them. You will have a much better chance of converting a visitor once they are on your main site.

To find out more about our SEO services, contact us on 0844 245 9160.

SEO Copywriting Tips

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:48:58 +0000

SEO Copywriting Tips

SEO copywriting involves the skilful writing of unique and optimised articles for a specific business including products and services for a web page or website. An SEO copywriter needs to write quality and original content including relevant information about the nature of the brand. This is done by making effective use of targeted keywords so that it can easily be found by users on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

When writing for SEO purposes, keep the following things in mind:

Keyword Density – A good copywriter must find the perfect balance of text and keywords and avoid excessive keyword density. Stuffing your text with keywords will just be picked up as spam to search engines.

Titles – Making your text stand out by utilising bold text will effectively show the reader what your article is about, as well as telling the search engine that these keywords are extremely important.

Target Audience – The copywriter should have a good idea about the target audience the website aims to attract. They can then adopt a certain style of writing to make sure the webpage reaches the relevant searchers.

Original and Fresh Content – Providing fresh, original and quality content will attract potential customers and keep them visiting your site again and again. SEO copywriting requires you to include your keywords but it is important to remember you need to sound human and make the rest of your content engaging and informative.

Style - SEO copywriters must be flexible in adapting to the different industries as well as their current trends and changes. This means taking on various different styles for each client including blog writing, article writing, forum posting and website copywriting. The copywriter needs to be versatile to know how to use a specific style at the right time.

Creating searchable, readable, engaging and shareable content is extremely important when copywriting for SEO. High-quality copywriting is an essential tool for helping your website rank highly in search engines like Google, which will in turn convert into more visitors and increase profits. Find out how you can benefit from our SEO copywriting services.

NeSEO Nominated for Business Excellence Award

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:23:15 +0100

NeSEO Nominated for Business Excellence Award

NeSEO are delighted to have been shortlisted in the New Business of the Year category for the Northamptonshire Business Excellence Awards 2011. The Awards, now in their 21st year will once again celebrate successful Northamptonshire companies and individuals and we are overwhelmed to be finalists. The Awards Presentation takes place on Thursday 17th November at the Barceló Hotel in Daventry with celebrity host Tom O’Connor. Winners will be announced on the evening and will receive a crystal trophy and certificate if successful.

We have been recognised for our rapid growth in terms of our client base over the last 12 months and also on our innovative approach in delivering completely bespoke SEO services to customers.

Wish us luck!

Leicester SEO - Importance of Article Writing

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:25:52 +0100

Leicester SEO Article Writing

Leicester SEO based company, NeSEO know that article writing is very effective for SEO purposes. One of the first things a content writer should know is how the entire search engine optimisation process works so they can gain an understanding about keyword placement and provide relevant content that will help direct traffic to the intended site. Keywords play an important role in SEO content as they are the words and phrases users will be typing into search engines to find the content they are looking for. You also need to know where to place the keywords as this is something search engines will look for when crawling and indexing your site. Keywords should be placed near to the top of the article, within the first sentence and if you can use it naturally, again in the first paragraph. In the middle, you should go lightly and concentrate on the quality content and towards the end it should be used a couple of times and within the last sentence. As Leicester SEO experts we believe there are no specific rules for how many keywords you should include but it should be a realistic number. Depending on the size of the article, 5 – 10 keywords has proved to be plenty. Stuffing your article with keywords is not recommended as the search engines will just see your content as spam.

Leicester SEO Quality Articles

A good content writer for SEO needs to not only have a good knowledge of how SEO works but excellent writing skills. Quality and relevancy is needed, not just for the search engines but so that humans can read your article, understand it and enjoy reading it. Leicester SEO company, NeSEO know that if the article you create doesn’t help the humans who read it, getting ranked well in the search engines isn’t going to matter at all. After all, it is the people who read what you write that matter most and buy from you. If people find your article interesting they will more than likely head over to the link that you provide them with. This is because you have built up their trust within the article and therefore they want to see more. By incorporating your website link within these articles, search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo will begin to associate your website as a relevant resource alongside the keywords used in your articles. There are hundreds of article directories online that you can choose from but it’s best to consider those that are quality and popular sites. Posting your articles in these types of high rated directories will help to attract quality visitors to your article and in turn to your website. If you’re looking for quality article writing, Leicester SEO experts, NeSEO can provide these SEO services for you.

Northampton SEO - Increase Website Traffic

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:41:48 +0100

Northampton SEO – Simple Tips for Increasing Traffic

As Northampton SEO experts, we concentrate on continuously building large volumes of traffic to a website. The main purpose of SEO is to make your website visible to search engines, which will then lead to higher rankings in results pages, which in turn will bring more traffic to your site. Of course, more traffic = more chance of sales. When we talk about increasing website traffic, there are several different things that it concerns including page views, sessions and unique visitors. For some websites, increasing page views will be the main aim because the main concern is that the majority of visitors view only one page of the site and then leave. For other sites it will be to increase the amount of unique and return visitors. Here are a few of the many SEO tips to increase traffic to your site:

- Web Page Optimisation

A search engine crawler will read the HTML of a web-page, so it must be optimised to guide the crawlers to the correct areas of the site. Use your targeted keywords in the right fields and references within your web page like Title, META Tags, Headers, etc.

- Quality and Unique Content

Northampton SEO experts, NeSEO believe that having quality, unique and engaging content on a website is essential in attracting customers and link partners. If they like what they read, they will more than likely return, plus it is a well-known fact that Google loves fresh and unique content. Although your site needs to be rich in keywords for SEO purposes, it also needs to be informative and make sense to maintain quality.

- Article Submission

Article marketing is becoming one of the most successful ways of promoting a website and your business. Writing quality and informative articles is important to build one way backlinks which helps in increasing page rank. It also brings more targeted traffic to your website as people who are clicking on the links in the article are potential customers already. Links that are generated from content rich pages are also always preferred by search engines.

- Social Media, Blogging, Bookmarking

Using social media, blogging platforms and bookmarking sites are great ways of building backlinks to your site. A link works similar to that of a vote, with search engines seeing it as a vote of confidence. The fact that other quality sites are willing to link with you indicates to sites like Google that your site is important. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have become more popular in recent years as well as bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Delicious. Utilising these sites are effective ways of increasing relevant traffic to your site.

To learn more about how Northampton SEO experts, NeSEO can help your business achieve its goals, give us a call on 0844 245 9160, or fill out our free SEO audit form.

SEO Peterborough - Link Building

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:22:57 +0100

SEO Peterborough – Quality Link Building

SEO Peterborough experts NeSEO believe that link building is one of the most crucial parts in a search engine optimisation strategy. Gaining inbound links from other quality websites is a major step in achieving a successful SEO campaign and with search engines now incorporating social media items into its results pages, it is vital to have all areas covered. There are many effective link building methods including forum posts, social bookmarking, article submission, link directories, blogging and guest posting. Article submission, blogging and guest posting are all great ways to gain exposure for your website. Writing interesting, relevant and unique content for sites other than your own is an effective way of building links and spreading your online presence. Quality content will be shared and linked to if it offers plenty of useful and valuable information and depending on the platform you use, people may even subscribe to your posts. As SEO Peterborough experts, NeSEO link building campaigns are always ethical and targeted at receiving only high quality and relevant links from likeminded websites and blogs.

Links are Votes

A link is seen as a vote of confidence by search engines; the fact that other quality sites are willing to link with you indicates to the search engine that your website contains relevant information and there’s a good chance that page will be regarded as an authority in search engines like Google. In short, the more quality links you have, the more quality votes your site will receive. In turn, you will gain more organic traffic from search engines due to a higher ranking placement and it is then that many more visitors will discover your website, read your content and convert in terms of using your product/service. Not all votes are equal in terms of their value and randomly placing links on websites and blogs that have no connection to your subject matter will be a waste of time. You will only gain quality links from sites that are relevant and benefit from a high traffic rate. As SEO Peterborough experts, we spend our time link building to source and engage with websites within your niche.

What is SEO?

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:15:52 +0100

Beginners Guide to SEO

SEO – search engine optimisation is the process of improving the visibility of a website or web page in search engines. Its aim is to gain higher rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPS) and involves techniques to gradually make your website friendlier to search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. Generally the higher a website is listed in search engines the higher the traffic levels will be, so the practice of SEO involves implementing techniques with the view to improve your positions.

Why is SEO Important?

Most of the traffic to your website will be directed by search engines like Google and Yahoo. If the search engines cannot find your site and index the web pages you will find that you miss out on a lot of potential visitors and customers as well as advertisers. The keywords you type into the search engine are crucial; choosing the right ones can bring a steady flow of quality visitors but choosing the wrong ones can result in no-one ever finding your website. Keywords are the building blocks of SEO and without the right ones, those efforts will go astray. Using them correctly could result in appearing on the first three pages of the search results. This is important as previous studies have shown that people only go as far as the first three pages of Google before they either find what they’re looking for or leave. Implementing SEO techniques with plenty of quality and relevant content is vital for any website wanting to improve rankings and visibility.

Read our other blog posts for more SEO basics.

SEO Kettering - Blogging

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:09:18 +0100

SEO Kettering – Blogging for Business

As an SEO Kettering based company, NeSEO believe that blogging is essential to your business. It is one of the easiest methods of keeping a website up to date with relevant and engaging content and will help to increase your visibility within search engines. Blogging is also important as it adds personality to your business away from the commercial side. A blog not only gives your business the opportunity to inform readers about your products/services but it allows you to write about whatever you want, whenever you want and allows you to interact and build relationships with your target audience. With the many social media tools available, it is also simple to share your blog posts and build a following who will then share your posts if they like them. Adding new content to a website on a regular basis is attractive to spider bots within search engines like Google. Websites that produce brand new quality content frequently stand a better chance of being crawled more often. This signifies to search engines that this site is updated regularly with content and therefore will provide users with the most recent and relevant available content. New blog posts may also appear in the ‘News’ or ‘Blogs’ section of Google and this can also help to improve your overall visibility. SEO Kettering based company, NeSEO will offer you the tools and content that your blogging campaign really needs.

SEO Kettering – Quality Blogging is Important

Blog readers are not looking for commercials, they are looking to be informed and entertained with compelling content from people who know what they are talking about. Once you have earned the readers trust, they will begin to tell their friends and share your posts amongst social media platforms. It is then that other blogs will begin to link to you as well as those readers who like your content. The quality content that you provide will leave a lasting impression and in turn people will return to your site and may even subscribe to your blog. When writing your blog posts it is important to engage with the reader by making them feel as though you are talking to them. It is also essential to keep an eye on the length of the post; once you feel you have given them the required information, wrap it up. If it is a long post then add bullet points to break down lists and include images or videos to make it enjoyable. Blogging allows you to personalise your online presence, giving readers a real insight into your business and the people that make it tick. As SEO Kettering based specialists, NeSEO believe that quality content is key to a blogs success.

SEO Keyword Research and Density

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:56:19 +0100

The Importance of Keyword Research in SEO

Increasing the chances of ranking well in search engines like Google starts with finding the best keywords. Keyword research is an essential part of SEO as without the right ones, efforts will go astray. The process will involve investigating the terms that people search for when looking for your product or service, how often they search for it and the competition that appears also. It is important to note that SEO keywords are much more than terms relating to your website. You need to take time to analyse what you’re up against and this will involve looking at other websites in your niche and reviewing their keywords. You are not simply trying to target the same keywords as your competitor; you should find unique and targeted keywords that relate to your own business.

Keyword Content Balance in SEO

It is important to note that keyword research is just the beginning of SEO. Competing for your chosen keywords can be a long process depending on your market and requires regular publishing of new content that is relevant to the keywords chosen. Regularly posting fresh content including your keywords is the best way to get visitors to return to your website. Whether this is done on-page or by writing articles and blogs, content should not be stuffed with keywords so that it makes it unreadable, it should flow naturally and be interesting, entertaining and informative. The keyword should almost take a back seat yet at the same time be included enough for people to find it when searching. Striking a balance between keyword density and natural copy is essential for the search engine spider and the reader. So how is this done?

- Keywords should be near the top of the article, within the first sentence and if it can be included naturally a couple more times in the first paragraph.

- In the middle of the article go lightly and concentrate purely on the content surrounding the keywords.

- At the end of the article use it a couple of times and preferably in the final sentence.

There are no certain rules but try optimising for a realistic number of keywords – 5 or 10 should be enough, depending on the size of the web page or article. Keywords are the building blocks of SEO and by using them correctly you will see a big impact on rankings.