How I got started.
I’ll make this brief but I am often asked, for various reasons, how I started out in SEO.
I worked for Hewlett Packard for many years as a Business Analyst. I left HP in 2001 and retrained as a Hypnotherapist. As I was always interested in the web and website design I built my own site, using wordpress, and then realised that a site without rankings was of no use whatsoever.
Therefore I spent many hours, plenty of experimentation (including websites that completely failed) and a fair bit of money (information can be pretty expensive) discovering the processes involved in SEO and before too long I was ranking in the top 3 of Google UK for ‘hypnotherapy’ and ‘hypnosis‘. In those early days you could get a top 10 ranking with good on page optimisation and just a handful of incoming links.
Now however the competition is much more fierce for just about every niche, however even though I no longer work on my hypnosis site I am pleased to say it still enjoys page 1 rankings for its main keywords, so it appears that good, strong historical SEO still counts a lot in the SERPS! (SERP – Search Engine Results Page)
Anyway, having had a fair bit of success with my own site a friend of mine asked me to do the same with his local cleaning business, and referrals came from referrals until before I knew it I was running a full time SEO business. So I’ve never had to make a cold call, or send out a sales email or letter as the business has always been there. Referrals are definitely the best way to grow your business!
Some of my clients have now been with me for several years and are rock solid at the top of the rankings.
I think that’s it, told you it would be brief.
Thanks….and if you would like to find out more about my services and how I can help you grow your business then please feel free to contact me and we can see what we can do.
Cheers
Mark
SEO Tips
SEO Tips
Just some random SEO Tips which may or may not be of interest. Thanks.
Using Search Engine Optimisation To Help Your Business
Understanding how your website’s rank in search engines has an effect on the success of your online site is important. This article includes tips that will help you rise to the top through search engine optimization.
You should know all about SEO before you start your journey. Websites are ranked by search engines based on proprietary algorithms. Read here to learn how to use these formulas to your advantage.
When ranking your website, search engines consider a number of different factors. One of these factors is the keywords found on your site and heading. Your website’s activity is important because search engines use this to rank it.
Your efforts at search engine optimization will be rewarded if you apply yourself with dedication and patience. You should add the keywords you are most concerned with all throughout the content on your site, including headings and page titles. This boosts the relevancy of your website to the search engines. Be open to new SEO ideas to implement, and always afford them enough time to start showing results. It is important to start with patience. Gather all of the information you can find, and put it to good use. Once you decide on the keywords for your site, place them in the text, as well as the titles and headings on your web pages. Doing all this will make your site seem more connected with the keywords and cause the search engine to rate it as more relevant. It is important to dedicate your time and patience if you want to improve your search engine ratings. Use all of the tips and suggestions you can to implement those ideas, and then give them some time to take effect. Once you have figured out which keywords you want to use, put them into your titles, headings and body of your text. This will increase the search engines’ perception of your site’s relevance. It takes time and patience to promote higher rankings on search results pages. Be patient, do your research, and give it time to work. Once you know your site’s primary keywords, you can add them to your text and page headers. This will let the search engines know that your site is about the keywords you chose.
You will not be able to simply pay for better ranking. If you have the money to spare, you can pay to be a featured result or have a sponsored ad, but the cost is usually prohibitive. Although you are guaranteed to show up at the top of the listings using this method, people know that they are sponsored links. The fact that they know they are paid links makes them less likely to click on them. Plus, the larger websites often grab these premium advertising locations.
You can greatly improve your site’s ranking by taking SEO to the next level with linking. Find ways to backlink to your own content, share your links on other websites, and exchange links with others in your niche. Or you can just contact the site owner and ask if you can have a link agreement and share with each other.
To generate profit, it is important to get targeted visitors to your website. Targeted visitors are basically visitors that you are most likely to covert into customers. You will also have plenty of visitors that are just browsers. When you get a random visitor, there is a very slim chance that they will help your business. Getting targeted visitors to your site requires using the proper keywords and advertising on similar websites.
If you are a business owner, you will miss out if you do not have a website. Having a website is great because sometimes your customers may want to purchase items from you online, especially those who are not able to get into your store. Look at your website as something you have to have and give it all the attention it deserves. I hope these SEO tips help in some way.
What is RSS
What is RSS?
RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. (Sometimes it is referred to as ‘Rich Site Summary’). Basically RSS delivers updated and changing content to anyone subscribed to that particular RSS feed. News feeds are very popular for instance as news is constantly updating throughout the day. If you were to have to continually monitor a news site for new information this would quickly become tedious and very time consuming.
The first thing you will need is an RSS reader. There are many of these and are either browser based or a downloadable application. Personally I use iGoogle and this is the most popular, although your could try My Yahoo, Feedster or Bloglines. They all perform the same function of notifying you if there is any new content in your subscribed RSS feeds. You only need one reader for all of your RSS feed subscriptions.
The obvious advantage of browser based RSS readers is that they are accessible from any computer, similar to an email hotmail account. Downloadable applications allow you to store the information on your computer, as you would your email in outlook.
Once you have chosen which reader to use you simply have to decide which content you would like to subscribe to. For instance a weather buff could subscribe to the BBC weather feed. Simply go to the BBC weather page and look for the familiar orange RSS feed button. Click on this to subscribe and all content will be delivered to your RSS reader. When there is an update you can just click on the headline to take you back to the new content on the subscribed website.
As the feed itself is more a means of notification than anything else, the information contained is very basic. Usually it is a clickable headline followed by a short description, and this is fine because that’s all we need. Some RSS feeds are set up to display the entire content of an updated post, but a brief headline is more common.
More and more sites are now taking advantage of RSS, and you can tell if a site has a feed as it will display the standard square, orange button on its page, or else this same button can be found in your url browser, usually on the right hand side.
From a search engine optimisation point of view, RSS feeds provide great backlinks to your site, and allow direct traffic from surfers interested in what you have to say. Blogging platforms are very popular with RSS as it is such an easy way to discover when your favourite blogger has added a new post. Social media also use RSS, so you could maybe subscribe to the feed of your favourites on Twitter, and be alerted as to when they post an update, rather than continually checking back to their page.
So why not subscribe to my updates now by clicking on the orange RSS icon above right, with the word ‘POSTS’ after it.
Thanks
Mark
Which Domain name?
Which Domain Extension?
Domain name is the address you type into your web browser ending in .com or .net or .co.uk ie google.com or google.co.uk or twitter.com Domain names can have a big influence on your SEO (search engine optimisation) and can influence the speed of indexing and how high your site is ranked, and can also have a very direct impact on how much money you can make.
It can be a difficult choice. You are looking for an SEO friendly domain. Keyword research is very important in any optimisation as ideally you are looking for a keyword that is searched for many times, but has low competition. This is an idealised view, and rarely seen so easily, but you get the general picture.
Once you have you a keyword or phrase it is important to use this phrase when choosing a domain name. Although the search engines haven’t come out and admitted it, all the evidence points to the fact that they see keywords and phrases as an important factor in ranking.
There are three categories of keyword matching options. Exact match, phrase match and broad match.
Exact Match matches your keyword or phrase in the domain exactly. For instance if your keyphrase is ‘bird seed’ then the exact match domain would be ‘birdseed.com ‘
Phrase match has the keywords in the right order in your domain but with an extra word also to create a new phrase. Using the bird seed example that could be ‘buybirdseed.com’
Broad match has the keywords in a different order, also with an extra word or two thrown in. For example ‘seedbirdonline.com’
There is also non keyword optimised domains, which don’t have any of your keywords included. Again taking the above example this could be ‘avianfood.com’
Generally non keyword phrases are most suited for companies with an established brand, or trying to build a brand. This doesn’t mean that these domains can not be used for your chosen keyphrase, it just makes it a little more difficult.
With all other ranking factors being equal then the search engines will rank in the following order: Exact, then phrase and finally broad.
In my next post I will discuss choosing the best domain if your keyword has been taken.
SEO – Video Evidence
Hi….just wanted to put a quick video up showing some of the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) success I have had recently.
If you areinterested in getting your site way up the Google rankings, then just email me your web address to mark@blogyourworld.com
Thanks!
Mark
List Building
Why Build A List?
Your list is your potential customers, clients, contacts and possible team members. Here are a few reasons why list building can be so useful.
- Opt In email marketing grows your business and leads to long lasting business relationships
- Ethical – Opt in list building gives your subscriber the right to change their mind at any time and opt out. This eliminates any possibility of spam or spam accusations.
- Announcements – send any news about your business to all your subscribers easily and quickly
- Automatically send updates to facebook and twitter
- Autoresponder – builds profitable relationships with your subscribers and allows you to welcome new subscribers
“The Money is in the List” is a common refrain from the internet Gurus.And this is an important point. ‘The List’ is basically your list of subscribers who are interested in what you have to say, or interested in the products or service you provide.
If you have a great website and you get a visitor, how do you get them to come back again for more of your quality products? The answer is in the list. It is ‘The List’ that allows you to communicate with your subscribers. You are receiving this email because you are on my list, and I, in turn, am on many other people’s lists. I am happy to subscribe to someone if they provide useful, quality information.
Having a relationship with your subscribers is the point you want to get to, so it is important that you provide good quality information and products. This allows you to invite your subscribers to your site again and again.
And this is what I try to do, I want people to return to my site many times, so I try and post useful information that will help or educate people. I think I manage this most of the time, but maybe some people disagree!
So if you have a website or a blog, how do you grow your list? Well the best service out there without a doubt is aweber service. I would recommend this to anyone. It has a double opt in (whereby you have to enter your details to subscribe and then confirm your subscription) and this eliminates any accusations of spam. They have hundreds of form templates and great customer support. Plus, you can also subscribe as an affiliate and build another income that way.
There are other list builders on the market, and it may be that you find one that you prefer. But whichever you decide to go with it is extremely important in your marketing efforts that you use a good, ethical list building company.
The money really IS in the list.
Buying a New Domain
Posted by Markcb on April 23, 2010 · 1 Comment
Buying a New Domain
It is important to get good keyword rich domain names, so, as always, keyword research is the most important part of this process. So, to use the ubiquitous ‘widget’ example, if you had a site that was selling widgets you could first try and buy the domain “widgets.com/.org/.net” etc if this is taken try “sellingwidgets.com” and so on until you get the domain you are happy with.
The two hosts I use most are Hostgator and Godaddy, you can click on the banners below to take you straight through to these sites:
If your product or service is country specific then I would always recommend getting a country specific top level domain (ccTLD – Country Code Top Level Domain) such as .co.uk for the UK, .fr for France, .ca for Canada etc. Most registrars will sell these domains, but if you are struggling to buy one for your specific location type your ccTLD followed by ‘domain names’ into the search engine and you should get a good choice from there (for example ‘.co.uk domain names‘). If not then feel free to get in touch with me and I will help.
So which domain extension is the best? There are so many extensions these days that opinion is very divided. The official line taken by Google is that the extension does not matter, but all the evidence points to the contrary. In general the top domain extensions in order of preference are
1 .com
2 .net or .org
3 .info or .biz
.com’s have always been more brand able and tend to do very well in the search engines.
.org’s are good too, but are still often associated with charities and organisation.
.info’s tend to be a little cheaper but because of this have always been seen as a little spammy. Originally they were associated with information sites, and if you have a site which is based mostly on supplying information then this will still be a good bet.
The use of hyphens in a domain name is another grey area. Generally a hyphen will make your site less brand able and harder for people to remember, but can still be a good idea if it helps you get your keyword rich domain name. I would not recommend however any more than 1 hyphen. So in our example above you could use selling-widgets.com but I would steer clear of you-selling-widgets.com
And finally we can move on to prefix and suffix. A prefix comes before your keyword and a suffix after it. So for instance in the widgets example your keyword could be prefixed by ’online’ or ‘your’ or ‘buy’ thus making onlinewidgets.com or buywidgets.com
The suffix would simply come after your keyword, such as widgets online.com or widgetsreviews.com
In general I would recommend using prefix and suffix if it is suitable for your business, if you are selling a product online then putting a prefix of ‘buy’ or ‘buying’ is very viable. Also of course the prefix and suffix are good if the domain name and extension you are primarily after are not available.
That’s it for now. As always feel free to ask any questions or leave a comment.
Mark
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