SEO Best Practice

Website Lead Generation

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website lead generation

RebrandWebsite Lead Generation for Normans Book Keeping & Payroll

  • Our brand development and subsequent website lead generation has been a massive success! We tied it all in together and provided the web visitor with just what ‘they needed’.

‘Book keeping is boring, isn’t it?’ We beg to differ…

When the managing director from Norman Book Keeping & Payroll came in to see us, he was interested in ‘refreshing’ his website. He wanted to grow the business, targeting particular types of customers and appeal to those looking for the right kind of help. From Owner managed business to larger SME’s, looking for expert bookkeeping and payroll services. A little frustrated, he had tried once before but it didn’t seem to have made any difference. The business still had no inbound inquiries from the website. He realised that the traditional method of just telling a website designer what you want, doesn’t work very well, without the right marketing know how. Let’s see how we applied our knowledge into marketing his business correctly and effectively.

previous website

In a nutshell we needed to do the following.

‘futurise his business in line with his customer’s needs and the book keeping industry’s competitive landscape.’

This now became a little more interesting.

The previous business marketing showed a dowdy, but functional business involved in providing all of the things you would expect in bookkeeping and payroll services. After consulting for a short while, we realised this wasn’t all they did. They actually provided some pretty amazing innovative services, allowing for online cloud-based book keeping services  in partnership with Xero. This allows for easy integration with, spreadsheets, Sage & Quickbooks, plus a plethora of different mobile apps driving information into a modern and exciting book keeping model. Some of these apps include the likes of Go Cardless, Shopify, Paypal and Stripe.

Norman Bookkeeping needed to resemble a contemporary firm, able to link up with your data effortlessly. They wanted to show how they produce quick, easy management reports and information as and when you require it. They didn’t need to change the way they worked, just the way they appeared and the way they communicated this up to date book keeping and payroll service in Aldridge, Walsall and regionally around the Black Country & the West Midlands.

For example

There are many advantages to using Normans such as:

  • Access your data on the go!
  • Automatic Bank Feeds mean that we can do the job much quicker and therefore cheaply
  • Holding all your purchase data electronically means that you will be fully compliant with HMRC’s new regulations for Making Tax Digital
  • Get paid faster with online invoicing
  • There are hundreds of apps that will link directly with Xero such as Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal and Shopify to name but a few.

So what did we do?normans com slip

  • Provided a thorough consultation and brief discovery
  • Advised upon current trends, industry requirements and intelligent customer targeting
  • Worked on a real and true representation of the business services against the required target audience and an ideal customer model
  • Applied some competition analysis and helped to create a unique ‘POD’, or point of difference. We also took into account some ‘POP’, or points of parity. In other words, what do we need to do to prove a ‘USP’, without moving too far away from the industry services that others also provide. e.g. ‘we do that too, but with a difference’.
  • Provided a brand positioning report and direction
  • From this positioning came a brand positioning statement and strapline
  • All of the above now went into creating a new brand and its ID/logo
  • We began the graphic design element using some desk research, developing fonts, illustration and visual perspectives. We employed colour coding, image research and other creative elements/marketing collateral to create something really functional and easy to understand.
  • Provided in depth technical site scoping to give the potential visitor the very best of user journey and slick informational navigation
  • Wire framed the site scoping, to visualise the website more effectively against it content requirements
  • Wrote effective and intelligently considered positioning copy and calls to action plus dynamic contact copy relevant to each piece or relevant service, to engage website lead generation
  • Developed the website, provided 301 re-directs, to capture past cached pages and posts for SEO purposes, unveiled and relaunched!
  • In general, we improved the user journey and calls to action through content and a contact dynamic, re-branded the business, improved the brand visibility and developed its website lead generation capacity

Website Lead Generation

Norman is now called Normans

We now know exactly what Normans do and they are most certainly, ‘not boring’.

See for yourself here @ – https://normansbp.co.uk/

Normans are now successfully receiving leads from the website. Not just any old leads, but the right kind of customers discovered against our agreed customer modelling! It’s been a massive success, their target audience can now discover the perfect solution to a book keeping and payroll problem. Contemporary services and time saving applications, information at the touch of a button. It’s right for them, it’s modern and ‘just what they need’, communicated clearly and concisely through a brand the customer can proudly recommend to others.

Before you rush out and spend £1000’s of pounds on SEO, think about this. Make sure your website has got what it takes to engage, convince and convert your visitor first. Theoretically if your lead conversion is 1% and it equates to £1000 worth of business, we can convert this to 2%, 3%, 5% or even a 10% uplift. You do the math, it’s not impossible to double your websites return on investment. You can apply the SEO later, when you know you can convert.

Normans now ‘Convert Numbers, into Knowledge’… because here at The Marketing People, we help to ‘Convert Knowledge, into Numbers’.

For more information on our website lead generation services, contact The Marketing People on 01543 495752 or contact@themarketingpeople.com

SEO strategies for E-commerce sites

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SEO Strategies for E-commerce sites

SEO Strategies for E-commerce sites

 

SEO is essential to modern business’s, in the on going battle to get to the top of the search results. But when it comes to an e-commerce site, many companies struggle. With having to make so much content, and so many products SEO friendly. This can mean loss of sales, which is easily preventable. 

So how can you optimise your site, to ensure you are attracting as many prospects as possible? Well in the world of rankings there are a huge amount of factors which count towards getting you to that number one spot. Here are just a few simple steps that could help you reach your SEO goal.

 

Let’s begin:

There are a few background steps you should take to begin with. These set you in a good starting position, and mean your strategy efforts have a good platform to start on.

What are your competitors doing?

It is one thing to have your page up and running. It is another to see if you are in the game, and your products will get the recognition they deserve. Spend time assessing your competitors: their products, their prices, and how usable their site is.

How easy is it to navigate your site?

Using your site as a customer, or sitting with an unbiased volunteer to use your site, is a completely different experience to using it as your companies. See how easy it really is to find your products. Does it take 2 clicks or 10? Is it a frustrating process? Look at optimising your site’s internal search function, so customers can get to what they want quicker and easier.

Good meta descriptions

Ensuring your pages have good, unique, meta descriptions is an essential before you start with on page SEO. Explaining to customers what they are about to view means that not only does Google up your ranking for providing relevant information for their users. But you also get more qualified prospects visiting your site.

 

 

Maintenance:

Once you’ve established your good platform, you now have to maintain a healthy site. By maintaining the following points, you help to maintain your results as a constant. Rather than all your efforts being focused at one point, when you have the time.

Keep your out of stock item pages up and running

Though you may not have it now, you may do in the future. Offer either an alternative option for your customers, or provide a date or when that product will be back in stock. If you have products that no longer exist, don’t just delete the page. Redirect to the later model, similar stock, or the main category page. This way you don’t lose customers to error messages when they can’t find the page.

Keyword Research

Keywords are something that have been around forever, but now need to be used smartly to achieve a result. You need to ensure your keywords are relevant to terms your customers actually use, rather than internal terminology. There are a number of tools through Google you can use to find new keywords, or see how yours are currently performing. You need to ensure you keyword is in the URL, the title and the text to ensure your SEO is optimised, but tread carefully! You don’t want to saturate your content with keywords. The text should still read well, so always make sure you have a fresh pair of eyes glance over everything to ensure you haven’t been keyword heavy.

Create unique product descriptions for every product

Make your product stand out with a unique description. If your product is being advertised by other sellers and maybe the manufacturers themselves, you have a lot of competition. By taking the time to create unique descriptions, you instantly make yourself stand out. As well as perhaps inspiring your target audience as to why they should buy your product.

Include Pictures or videos for every product

Not only does including pictures or videos or each product make it more appealing for customers. It also gives you another opportunity to improve your SEO. By creating great alt tags, you not only improve customer experience, meaning happier customers. But Google also takes this into account when they consider your ranking.

 

 

Updating:

Once you’ve got in to the rhythm of steady maintenance for your site, you may want to push yourself a little further with some updates, and see what results you can achieve.

Create seasonal categories to maximise seasonal attention

When (like now) the winter starts to roll in, most people will quickly realise they are not prepared. They will search winter coats, scarves, hats etc. You can make the most of this demand by ensuring your pages are ready with a seasonal category. One that is ready with related products for your customers to browse.

Google Ads

If you are really looking to boost your search results and to encourage sales, it may be worth considering Google ads. To get those clicks through to your product. Google Ads can be extremely complicated, so take the time to understand it before you begin. To ensure you get the best results. Keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming post on simple steps to setting up AdWords.

Encourage user reviews

As part of your updating process, you need to actively encourage user reviews. Not only do reviews help to reassure buyers, or push them further down the sales funnel, they also help with your search results. If you’re not confident on how to gain reviews, why not take a look at our blog why customer reviews are important and how to get them.

 

SEO is an ever changing landscape, so for the best results, you need to be up to date with the latest news and changes. As well as implement those changes within your own strategy. By staying up to date, you stay ahead of your competitors, and enable your customers a great experience every time they visit your site. There are a number of sites that cover SEO news, including our own blogs.

If you need a helping hand, or some guidance on how to best utilise your website’s SEO, you can take a look at our SEO services, or call us for a no obligation chat on 01543 495752.

What are meta descriptions and why are they important?

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what are meta descriptions and why are they important?

what are meta descriptions and why are they important?

Meta descriptions are used to describe the contents of a page. And are often displayed in search results by search engines.

The meta description is the black copy in search results underneath the page title and URL. (See image to left)

In Google, meta descriptions no longer have any SEO benefit. As they were abused when people rammed them full of keywords.

Yahoo and Bing however give a small amount of weight to meta descriptions. Though if you ram it with keywords they will penalise you.
Meta-descriptions

It’s worth remembering that search engines won’t always use your meta descriptions. If they feel there is a piece of copy on your website that is more relevant to the users search terms than your meta description, they will use that instead.

 

Is it worth using meta descriptions then?

You can see why people would ask this question. Adding meta descriptions can be time intensive, especially if you have a lot of pages.

The best way to think about meta descriptions is as an advert. It will be one of the first things users see in search results. You need to convince people to click through to your page and not your competitors.

 

Meta descriptions best practice

Ideally your meta descriptions should be around 155 characters long. If it’s much longer you might find the end is cut of in search results as 155 is around the maximum they can show.

As we said earlier, the best way to think about meta descriptions is to imagine they’re an advert. So you need to write some short, interesting and compelling copy which encourages people to click through.

Your meta descriptions need to stand out from competitors and tell them why they should go to your website and not anyone else’s.

Your meta descriptions need to stand out from your competitors.

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Don’t be tempted to use the same meta description for every page. If you’re going to use them, make sure they are unique to each page.

 

How do I add meta descriptions

How you’ll add meta descriptions depends on how you edit your website.

If your website is hard coded you need to put the following code between the <head></head> tags.

<meta name=”description” content=”this is where your meta description goes.”>

If your website has a CMS system, like Concrete5, there will be a place for you to add a meta description.

For example in Concrete5 you hover over ‘edit’ and select ‘Properties’. Under the ‘Custom Attributes’ tab you can see the option to add a meta description in the left menu. You then type your copy into the meta description box and press ‘Save’.

If your website is an ecommerce website there may be an option for you to add a meta description to each product where you edit the products information.

Some of our clients use Magento and when you edit a product, there is a ‘meta description’ tab in the menu on the left hand side. Which allows you to add a meta description.

 

If done right meta descriptions should help to pull more people into your website. Giving you more opportunities to sell your products or services.

 

Are you looking to do more with your companies SEO? Why not contact one of our friendly team today to see how we could help, and in the meantime, you can read more about SEO in our blogs. 

What are alt tags and how do I use them?

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what are alt tags and how do i use them?

what are alt tags and how do i use them?

Are you confused about what ‘alt tags’ are, or how to use them? If so, keep reading. We’ll explain all and send you away with a few tips for implementing alt tags on your website.

 

What are alt tags?

Alt tags are a small and simple piece of HTML code which is used to describe an image.

For example, the image to the left is a picture of our French Bulldog, George, sat on a desk. The alt tag for this image is ‘French bulldog George sat on a desk’. If that image could not load, you would see the words ‘French Bulldog George sat on a desk’.

 

French Bulldog George sat on a desk

Why are alt tags useful?

If an image is unable to load properly or a user has images turned off in their browser the alt tag will be shown. So that users can see what image was supposed to be there.

Additionally, alt tags are useful for people who are visually impaired and use a screen reader as it will be able to read the alt tag and tell them what’s there.

They also help search engines as they cannot ‘see’ what an image shows. So alt tags tell them what’s in the image which can help your images show up in image searches.

 

Do alt tags help SEO?

They won’t make a huge difference to your search rankings but they can help your website gain visitors through image search.

 

How do I use an alt tag?

If your website runs on a Content Management System (CMS), such as Concrete5 or WordPress, there will be a small field when you upload your image where you can simply type in your alt tag.

If your website is flat coded, your alt tag will look like this:

<*img src=”georgeonadesk.jpg” alt=”French Bulldog George on a desk”/*> (Remove the * to use this code)

 

Tips for using alt tags

  • Describe what’s in the image using keywords
  • Write your alt tag for users not search engines
  • If the image shows a product, use the full product name
  • Don’t stuff it full of keywords

You should be using alt tags on all of the images on your website to enhance user experience.

You should be using alt tags on all of the images on your website to enhance user experience.

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If you need help applying alt tags to your images or help getting the most out of your website, get in touch for a free no obligation chat about how we could help your business. Looking for tips on your SEO? Read more of our SEO blogs here. 

Six Reasons Why Long Tail Search Terms Are Important Too

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six reasons why long tail search terms are important

six reasons why long tail search terms are important

Ranking number one for a one or two word search phrase seems to be every website owners dream. However, sometimes it’s better to go for long tail search phrases which are more specific and have less competition.

When Ask.com was released it encouraged users to ‘talk’ to the search engine in a conversational manner. Which made it quite popular, especially with people who were new to the internet.

Years later when 65.8% of the UK population have smartphones and more and more people use voice search, long tail keyphrases are more important than ever.

 

What are long tailed search terms / key phrases?

Long tailed search terms are search terms which are made up of three or more words. For example, ‘dog treats’ would be a short tail search phrase. Whereas ‘how do I make homemade dog treats’ would be a long tail search phrase.

 

Long tailed search terms are easier to rank for

It’s much easier to rank for long tail search terms. As there is much less competition for a long search term.

How-do-I-make-homemade-dog-treats-search-results

For example for the search term ‘dog treats’ there are 112,000,000 results. But for ‘how do I make homemade dog treats’ there are 40,000,000 results. While 40 million is still a lot of results, it’s much less than 112 million results.

Generally, the longer the search term you want to rank for is the less competition there will be.

The longer the search term you want to rank for, the less competition there will be.

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Long tail searches provide more accurate search results for users

Short tail keyphrases can be quite vague. Whereas long tail keyphrases are more specific. Meaning you get results which are more accurate and much closer to what you were searching for.

Keeping with the dog treat example. If you search for ‘dog treats’, you get a list of fairly big well known retailers selling dog treats. If you search for ‘how do I make homemade dog treats’ you get a list of articles which tell you how to make homemade dog treats.

This means the search results answer your problem or question much better than a vague short tailed search term.

Studies have also found that people using long tail search terms have higher conversion rates than those using short tail search terms, which makes sense because long tail phrases are more specific meaning that person knows what they’re looking and is closer to converting.

 

Long tail searches are more conversational and natural

Being able to use a search term which is quite conversational is easy and natural for us to do. It also means search engines are much easier to use for people who don’t use the internet all that often or are new to it.

More conversational search terms are even more important since Google has released Voice Search which means people will ‘talk’ to Google in a conversational manner and ask things like ‘how do I made homemade dog treats’ rather than ‘homemade dog treats recipes’.

 

Long tail search terms with well with content marketing

Long tail search phrases work well with content marketing, especially if you’re creating titles which are quite conversation or are a question themselves.

For example, we know that for us our most popular blog post are how tos and people search for things like ‘how business use hashtags in Facebook’ which we know links to our blog post we recently posted about how businesses can use Facebook hashtags.

 

Long tail search terms help you

Up until recently you could figure out what your most popular type of content was and what people were searching for to reach your website by looking at the organic search terms in Google Analytics. Google have recently put a stop to this to protect users, which means all search terms will now show up as ‘not provided’.

To find out what your most popular content or pages are look at how many visits each page gets.

For example, if your website sells gardening gifts and one of your most visited pages is a pink gardening set, you know that your visitors are interested in gardening gifts which appeal to women and may be buying for their wife, girlfriend, mother or sister.

 

Long tail search terms will help you rank well for short tail search terms

Search engines, Google especially, are doing their very best to provide users with the best answers to their searches and are doing so by encouraging them to be more specific, conversational and use long tail search terms. If you aim to rank well for long tail search terms it will also help you rank well for short tail search terms.

Sticking with the dog treat example, imagine you create content such as;

  • How do I make homemade dog treats
  • Why are organic dog treats are better for your dog
  • How many dog treats should I give my dog a day
  • Dog treats for dogs with food allergies
  • Dog treats for dogs on a diet

As you can see all of the above points have ‘dog treats’ in the title which is a short tail search term in itself, so it will benefit your short tail rankings.

 

You don’t need to focus on just long tail or just short tail; it’s possible to do both, especially if your long tail phrases contain a short tail phrase. It’s important not to rule long tail phrases out because they get less searches; yes, they do get less searches but people using long tail searches know what they’re looking for and are more likely to convert.

 

Contact Us

If you’re a business based in Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock, Staffordshire or the West Midlandsand need help creating opportunities to sell by improving your websites SEO and search rankings, get in touch to find out how we can help you. Call us on 01543 387 047 or email us at contact@themarketingpeople.com. In the meantime, why not check out more of our SEO blogs here. 

How to Write SEO Friendly Title Tags

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How to write SEO friendly title tags

How to write SEO friendly title tags

Title tags tell both search engines and people what a page is about. It’s vital to get your title tags right and make sure they’re SEO friendly. As they show up in search results and need to encourage people to click through to your website.

 

It’s vital to get your title tags right and make sure they’re SEO friendly.

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What is a Title Tag?

As we mentioned above, the title tag tells people and search engines what a page is about. You can find a list of SEO terms in our SEO Jargon Buster if you want to expand your knowledge.

 

Where does a Title Tag Appear? 

Title tags in Google search results

Title tags appear in search results (as shown above) and in people’s browsers (as shown below) at the top of the window and as the title of any tabs open in the browser.

Title tag in browser

 

Can I use my Company Name?

Yes, you should definitely use your company name!

 

If a user already knows the name of your company, they may choose to click through to your website based on your name alone. Especially if they’ve had a positive experience or know someone who has. If a user doesn’t know you, using your name may help to build up brand recognition.

 

How long should a Title Tag be?

It’s recommended that your title tag is no longer than 70 characters. Since that is the total amount of characters a search engine can display in search results.

 

A title longer than 70 characters will not damage your search rankings. It will just mean the entire title won’t be seen. Similarly, a title much shorter than 70 characters won’t harm your SEO. It will mean that you’re missing out on opportunities to use keywords.

 

Tips for creating interesting SEO friendly title pages

Now we’ve answered a couple of burning questions you might have, here are three really simply tips to help you write interesting and SEO friendly title tags.

 

What’s it about?

The first and most obvious tip is to ensure the title tells people what the page is about using important keywords. Don’t be tempted to fill your title tag full of keywords as keyword stuffing may harm your SEO.

It’s important to get the right mix of informative and attention grabbing so that people read the title and want to go to your page because it sounds interesting and/or sounds like it will answer their question.

Sometimes it can be really difficult to try and fit everything into 70 characters, so make sure you aren’t using words such as ‘and’ or ‘if’ and are only using words which are absolutely necessary.

 

Make sure titles are unique

It’s really important to make sure your titles are unique.

You shouldn’t have two pages the same or with the same content on your website, therefore your titles should all be unique.

Don’t be tempted to use the same title across all of your pages, because although it may save you time it may reduce the number of visits you get from search engines because people are confused about what’s actually on the page.

 

Most important keywords first

Make sure you put your most important keyword right at the start of your title tag.

SEOmoz carried out some testing and found that the closer to the beginning of a title the keyword is the more impact it will have on search rankings.

If you want to learn more about SEO, why not check out our post on what is SEO and why is it important?

If you’re a small business based in the Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock, Staffordshire or West Midlands area and need help improving your websites title tags, SEO or search rankings, get in touch with us to find out how we can help you. Call us on 01543 387 047 or go to our SEO service page for more information. You can find more of our SEO blogs here. 

Eight SEO Techniques to Avoid & What To Do Instead.

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8 SEO techniques to avoid and what to do instead

8 SEO techniques to avoid and what to do instead

It’s natural for a business to want their website to rank first in search engines and black hat SEO techniques can be tempting. However they can do more harm than good.

Black hat SEO techniques are techniques which break search engine rules and basically trick a search engine into giving a website a higher search ranking than it deserves.

Search engines ‘frown’ upon black hat techniques and are smart enough to know if you’re using them and will punish a websites search rankings if you are caught. In some extreme causes they may even remove a website from its listings altogether.

SEO is a long and ongoing process, so using black hat techniques to try and get a quick win will do you more damage in the long run.

Using black hat techniques to get a quick win will do you more damage in the long run.

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Not only can these techniques damage your search rankings, but by choosing to use these techniques you won’t be giving any readers any kind of benefit or useful information, so it really is better to put some time and effort into creating useful content.

Search engine algorithms are incredibly smart, and there are a number of things they will take into account when deciding which order to display search results, here are just a few;

–          Relevance to keywords searched for

–          Is the content high quality and helpful?

–          High quality inbound links

–          Traffic to the website

Below is a list of eight black hat SEO techniques you should be avoiding and what you can do instead to naturally improve your websites search ranking.

 

Keyword Stuffing

This is probably the most common black hat technique as it’s fairly easy to do. It involves ramming your content with keywords and keyphrases to the point it probably makes little sense to anyone trying to read it.

The idea behind this technique is that the more instances of keywords you want to rank for there are in your copy, the higher you’ll rank in a search engine.

Thankfully search engines are smart and can distinguish between high quality content that is naturally keyword rich and content which is just crammed full of keywords.

What to do instead

Carry out some research into keywords you want to rank for, look at keywords your target audience may use to reach your website and carry out a Keyword Research Report (KRR).

Once you have done this you can begin creating helpful and useful copy which is keyword rich and makes complete sense to the reader and which will help you improve your search rankings.

 

Hidden Text

Hidden text means creating text which is the same colour of the background.

A user will be unable to read this hidden text, however search engines can read it no problem.

Since search engines can read hidden text and users can’t, hidden text is used for keyword stuffing.

What to do instead

As we mentioned above; carrying out keyword research and writing high quality, useful content will benefit you, your website, your users and your business far more than hiding a massive list of hidden keywords.

 

Buying Links

Parting with £9.99 and receiving 5000 links sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it? No.

Inbound and outbound links can benefit your SEO, especially if you’ve got incoming links from authoritative websites, such as the BBC or .gov websites.

However if you’re spending £9.99 and receiving 5000 links in return, the chances are they’re all going to be incredibly poor quality and will actually damage your search rankings.

If search engines see that thousands of poor quality websites are linking to yours, they will assume that your website is low quality itself and won’t provide a reader with useful information, and they will therefore decrease your search rankings.

What to do instead

Work hard to create great, useful and shareable content that people will want to link to. You could also write guest blog posts for similar and relevant websites which would provide you with a link to your website.

 

Comment Spamming

Commenting on blog posts or news stories which allow you to link back to your website is one of the quickest and easiest ways to gain backlinks.

Some website owners abuse this and leave poor comments on any and every blog post or news story which will allow them to link back to their website.

This is called ‘comment spamming’, and the chances are that if you have a website or a blog with a comment section you’ve been a victim of this. You know those really vague comments with a link back to a completely unrelated website? Yeah that’s the stuff.

What to do instead

Leave useful and helpful comments on blog posts or news stories which are related to your area. It really is that simple.

 

Directory Listings

There are very few directories which are high quality and are worth listing your website in nowadays. Search engines really don’t award much to being listing in directories, however being listed in some can be useful.

There is no punishment to being listed in directories, unless perhaps you pay to submit your website to thousands of low quality directories in one go. As we mentioned above, having thousands of low quality incoming links can harm your SEO.

What to do instead

Go for human edited listings which are often much harder to get into and require more information, for example, Yahoo Directories or DMoz.

 

Mass Article Submissions

If you write a brilliant piece of content it make sense that you’d want as many people as possible to see it. However submitting it to as many article directories as possible isn’t the right way to do it.

You’ll be creating duplicate content which will all be linking back to your website. Search engines don’t like duplicate content, as it could infringe copyrights and is a poor way to try and improve your search rankings.

What to do instead

Get your content in front of as many eyes as possible by promoting your content through social media or email marketing.

If you really want to submit your content to directories, submit it to a couple of the highest quality ones that give you the most traffic, instead of the low quality ones which probably don’t send any traffic your way.

 

Content Scraping

For an honest website owner abiding by white hat SEO techniques, this has to be the most frustrating black hat SEO technique. It involves copying content from one website and posting it on another website without attributing anything to the original creator of the content.

Sometimes scraping websites may link back to the website where the content came from, which could actually have a negative affect on the original websites search rankings as they are a poor quality website.

Not only is content scraping a black hat SEO technique, it’s also illegal as it infringes copyright laws.

If you find that your website has become a victim of content scraping, Google allows you to report scraper pages.

What to do instead

Nothing good will come of content scraping, at all. Research what kind of content your target audience want and create useful, high quality content which people will want to share.

 

Cloaking

Cloaking involves displaying different content to the website users and search engines. If your website is found to be using cloaking you be removed from a search engines index altogether as they are unable to do their job properly if you are showing them one thing and users another.

What to do instead

Instead, focus on building a great website which offers users a great user experience and contains useful and informative information that will help you to generate leads and hopefully sales.

 

Are you a business based in the Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock, Staffordshire or the Midlands? Is your website not performing as well as you’d like in search engines? If so get in touch with us to find out more about our SEO services and how we can help improve your websites search rankings. Or you can check out more from our SEO blogs here.