Knowledge is power – here are five things SEO consultants can teach their clients to help them understand what Search Engine Optimisation can achieve for their site.

One of the main roles of SEO consultants is to educate and inform their clients about the Search Engine Optimisation process. Some online marketing ‘experts’ take the approach of telling clients what they want to hear and dealing with the consequences later but it’s your responsibility as an industry expert to set realistic expectations – this is key to a satisfying client relationship and successful SEO campaigns.

1. Surfing the web doesn’t make you an SEO expert

Like painting a wall doesn’t make you a painter, surfing the web doesn’t make someone an SEO expert. Feedback is essential but clients need to understand that they have paid big dollars to hire SEO consultants and they should at least consider their suggestions. Explain to clients the methodology behind your actions – when they know the rationale behind what you are doing and why you are doing it, they will appreciate it more.

2. If you want instant gratification, look elsewhere

With updates such as Google Caffeine, Google is getting faster at indexing new content on the web but clients need to be made aware from the onset that their new website or web page may not show up on the rankings until a few weeks or even months. If they need immediate visibility, SEO consultants can advise them to use pay-per-click advertising at the start of their online marketing campaign alongside a structured SEO program.

3. SEO is a long term strategy

SEO may not give a website instant visibility on Search Engines but once it is ranking, with ongoing SEO maintenance, a client can keep those rankings over time. With a PPC strategy, once they stop paying for the campaign, their Search Engine visibility will stop immediately. SEO is a better investment over a longer time period while PPC is a quick-fire strategy and step up for websites to get their foot on the rankings ladder.

4. There is no end date with SEO campaigns

Whether they decide to continue with your services as an SEO specialist or take their SEO in-house when they feel confident and empowered to do so, it will require ongoing maintenance and education. SEO is a dynamic industry and as seen by the recent updates Google has made such as Google Fresh, Google Panda and Google Caffeine, there is always something new and exciting happening to learn about.

5. You get what you pay for with SEO

If an SEO company is guaranteeing first page positions within weeks not months or 1000’s of back links for $100/month, a client need to question the method behind their madness. A link building profile has to be built naturally and organically over time and if they hire a cut-rate SEO company accelerating their rankings through unethical methods, your website can be penalised or banned which can impact your online revenue.

Setting a realistic timeline and benchmarks in the beginning is important, but you need to continually reinforce this with clients as they often can forget. SEO Works has a team of dedicated SEO consultants that partner with their high-profile clients to educate them about the basic principles of SEO and help them achieve maximum SEO outcomes – contact SEO Works if you would like to find out more about their SEO packages.

Here are some of the common ecommerce SEO do’s and don’ts for savvy webmasters.

By the nature of ecommerce websites and the amount of pages on their sites, Ecommerce SEO is a laborious and time consuming task. Done well, you can reap the investment of a well optimised corporate or retail site through increased traffic, an increased conversion rate and improved bottom line. Find out more about the frequent mistakes made by companies operating ecommerce sites and how to avoid them.

Duplicate copy

A common ecommerce SEO mistake is duplicate content whether it is copy replicated across different pages of their website, duplicated across several branch websites or reproduced across different websites. Work with your developer to ensure duplicate pages are not indexed and rewrite generic product descriptions from manufacturers. You can use a simple online tool like Copyscape to check for duplication across the web.

Non-descriptive URLS

Static URLs are best in the context of SEO. Ecommerce sites are often found guilty of automatically generated, ID-based URLs or category-level URLs. This problem can occur with (CMS) that do not allow webmasters to create their own custom URLs. Ideally URLs need to be keyword rich and descriptive. This boosts your Search Engine rankings for that particular keyword but it also assists in the navigation of your site for consumers.

Duplicated title and description tags

A lot of ecommerce sites are still not adding unique title and description tags to their pages. A meta description is a snippet of text that sits just under the website URL after the title tag on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) – see example below. SEO experts are in debate over whether Search Engines use this as a ranking signal. Google has openly said they do not use the meta tags as in their ranking algorithms.

Regardless of this, it’s always a good idea to write your own meta description tags as a suggested summary for Search Engines to use. Why? Description tags give readers an understanding of what the page is about and entices them to click through to it. When you have a large site, it might be tempting to copy and paste the meta data to save time but you are potentially cannibalising your ecommerce SEO efforts.

Flash based sites

This is a common ecommerce SEO mistake. Search Engines have become a lot better at indexing Flash but sites such as Maurie and Eve built entirely in Flash with a lot of images and little text still present a lot of challenges for SEO experts. Some companies have both a Flash and HTML based site to counteract Search Engine visibility problems. Popular portable devices such as the iPhone and iPad do not support Flash at all.

Poor use of internal linking

Internal linking is another commonly missed ecommerce SEO opportunity. Not only can contextual internal linking be effective in helping to improve a site’s rankings for targeted key phrases, it is also where sites can take the ‘MacDonald’s – do you want fries with this’ approach to up selling, make your site more relevant to users and gives them reasons to stay on the site for longer. Examples of internal linking opportunities include:

• Complementary or related products eg clothing retailers can also highlight accessories or shoes also sold on the site that can be worn with an outfit. Luxury clothing retailer Net a Porter has a ‘You may also like’ section which is a good example of this.
• Products that other customers bought that you may also be interested in – Amazon does this well with their ‘Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought’ section.
• Displaying products that other customers viewed which may be of interest to the consumer. This approach is used on sites such as www.realestate.com.au which has a ‘People also viewed’ section.
• Linking products from the same brand with a ‘View Other Products from This Brand’ section.
• Highlighting customers’ favourites which is an internal linking tactic used on the Clearly Contacts site.
• Featured items – this could be the most searched for, highest selling products or an item that is discounted in a promotion you are running.

No external link building

While owners of corporate websites may be conversant with on-page optimisation, some struggle with off-page optimisation and the importance of external link building to boosting their Search Engine ranking. Creating a quality link building portfolio is always a challenge for ecommerce sites that may have a lot of product pages but present little opportunities to obtain organic links. Here are a few link building strategies:

• Adding your ecommerce site to trusted directories such as the Yellow Pages and White Pages, local directories and business-specific directories.
• Requesting your customers, suppliers and affiliates if you can put a link on their website.
• Creating a company blog about new products and services, events held at your company, industry-related news such and so forth.
• Uploading media releases and writing articles that can be used for syndication across different sites.
• Positioning yourself as an expert and writing guests’ posts on other related and quality industry sites, participating in forums and commenting on blogs with a link back to your website.
• Creating an account on video hosting sites like YouTube and adding videos regularly with a link back to your website.
• Sending out your products and services for review to journalists, reviewers and local bloggers in return for a link back to your site.
• Asking satisfied customers to write reviews about your products and services on industry-related sites.

Read more about other Common Link Building Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.

Neglecting their Google Places Page

Unfortunately a lot of smaller ecommerce sites do not even know what a Google Places page is let alone understand how to optimise it. For the uninitiated amongst us, Google Places is a web page for every place in the world, organising all the relevant information about it. Places Search was introduced in late 2010 where Places Pages were merged with organic search results thus making this important for ecommerce sites.

An ecommerce site cannot rest on its rankings – there are always opportunities to make your website optimal for search. SEO is an ongoing long term strategy  – in today’s virtual market corporate sites especially those in competitive and saturated markets need to keep up with SEO best practices. Contact SEO Works for more information about their ecommerce SEO packages and proven performance history with a corporate clientele.

Maximise your website’s performance by minimising your bounce rate – we show you how.

Your website’s bounce rate is one of the key metrics you should be monitoring as you seek to improve your conversion rate. It is a sign of visitor quality and believed by some SEO experts to be included as a trust signal in Search Engine algorithms. Here are some best practice guidelines that can be applied to all websites to decrease the number of visitors exiting your site within less than 5 seconds upon entering.

What is a bounce rate?

As defined by Google, a bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. A high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. Digital Marketing Evangelist Avinash Kaushik says for there to be a low bounce rate, there needs to be a strong correlation between customer intent and web page purpose

What is an average bounce rate?

Even companies with the best optimised sites will have a bounce rate sitting around 20% so a range of 0-5% is just unrealistic for most sites. There is no average or industry standard but Avinash Kaushik says that anything over 35% is a cause for concern and anything above 50% is worrying. Even if you have a low number of visitors exiting your site upon a few seconds of entry there is always room for improvement.

How can a visitor bounce off your website?

There are several different ways that a visitor can leave your website and become a bounce rate statistic. These may include the following:

• Pressing the back button on their browser after entering your website
• Closing the open window or the tab.
• Typing in another website address on the browser.
• Clicking on a link to another website.
• The session timing out.

What can contribute to a high bounce rate?

There are several reasons for a traffic exiting your website in droves and usually it’s due to a combination of factors and not one isolated element. In conjunction with your marketing team, web designer and your SEO consultant, you need to look at your technical infrastructure, the website design, the content, the online advertising and the way you are optimising your website. These include the following:

• Your website did not look trustworthy or secure.
• Your website was sluggish or the pages were taking too long to load.
• The content was not compelling enough to hold the visitor’s interest.
• There is no clear call to action on the landing page.
• You are optimising your site for the wrong search terms.
• The content is not relevant to what the user was searching for.
• The visitor may find your website annoying such as background music, a video that starts upon entering the website or invasive advertising.
• You are targeting the wrong audience for your online advertising.
• A website has put a link to your website within their content that may not be relevant to the products and services you are offering.

How can you improve your bounce rate?

There is no easy way to find out exactly what is causing your bounce rate but if you find that there may be a few problems then they should all be addressed at the same time. It may not call for a total website redesign. You may be able to make a few minor tweaks here and there to your website to improve the spring factor. Here are just a few measures you may have to take:

• Analysing the optimisation of your website and whether you are using the most relevant and best keywords.
• Delivering what was promised – having a clear correlation between the keywords, meta data and on page content.
• Offering a clear call to action for customers to nudge them down the path of conversation.
• Addressing your external link building strategies and ensure you are targeting websites that are high quality, credible and authoritative but also relevant to your product and service offerings.
• Examining your internal link building strategies and ensuring that there are internal links within pages to help visitors navigate your website.
• Testing and improving the site speed.
• Evaluating the online marketing for the site both internally such as the popups, banners and so forth as well as external advertising such as pay-per-click advertising.

Give your visitors what they are searching for and minimise your bounce rate through highly-targeted Search Engine Optimisation techniques. SEO Works is a full-service SEO agency that can help you with keyword research, optimising web pages, creating landing pages, analysing the technical infrastructure and examining link building activities to help create websites with a low bounce rate and high conversation rate.

Harness your local mojo and increase your local search visibility with these online marketing strategies.

Location Location Location or local search is as important for online businesses that are targeting a certain regional area as it is for real estate and buying houses. Local SEO can drive pre-qualified leads to your website who are already interested in buying products and services from an online supplier in your locality. All you need to do is convert them. Sound easy? Here are seven tips to keeping it local and increasing your revenue.

Using location-based keywords

Add the location of your business to your keywords. Potential customers who are looking for companies in a certain region will most likely use longer tail keywords to narrow down their search. So if you are a gym based in Castle Hill, your keyword portfolio would include ‘Castle Hill gym’, ‘gym in Castle Hill’ and other variations. They usually have lower search volume but targeted local traffic will lead to higher conversion rates.

Optimising landing pages

Help Search Engines recognise you are local to a certain region by optimising landing pages with the location-based keywords you have carefully chosen (see above). If possible, optimise each landing page with a different keyword or keyword phrase. As per SEO best practice, they need to be inserted naturally and seamlessly within the text and code. Optimise landing pages by inserting keywords into the:

• URL
• Description and title tags
• Headings
• Body text
• ALT image tags
• Anchor text

And make sure to mention you street address on every page of your website (preferably in the footer area) + on the contact page. This helps Search Engines determine the area you’re in.

Collecting citations

Citations are a trust factor in SEO and can help improve your local rankings. A citation in the context of local search is where your business name has been mentioned along with your street address and preferably a local phone number (NAP). It doesn’t have to include a link to your website but makes for the ideal citation. Citations need to come from quality, trustworthy and relevant websites. These may include:

• local directories
• review sites
• suppliers’ and affiliates’ websites
• business associations or the local chamber of commerce
• competitor analysis

Local search link building

It is important to target localised websites in your region for local link building. As per citations, they need to be trustworthy, credible and have high authority and relevancy. Search Engines prefer that link building is done organically and developed over time. They will get suspicious if a new website has 1000 links back links in just one day. You can find local link building opportunities via local blogs, forums or social media sites..

Google Place Pages Optimisation

Google Places Search introduced in late 2010 plays an increasingly important role in local SEO. Places Search merges map results with organic listings. This typically occurs when you search for a product or service followed by a location or vice versa such as ‘Sydney gyms’. By optimising your Place Page, you not only improve your local Search Engine rankings but also add value for people visiting the page.

Local social media

With the growing popularity of social networks such as Foursquare and Facebook Places, it is an important space for local businesses and has the potential to be a strong driver of pre-qualified leads. They allow people to post where they are, connect with friends nearby and share deals via portable devices. When people check into Facebook Places, the updates appear on the Place page, their friends’ News Feed and the Wall.

Local pay per click

If you are aiming at a local market, online advertising campaigns should also be localised. Local keywords are better targeted and result in a higher click through rate which will in turn help with your Adwords quality score. Targeting local keywords usually have a lower level of competition which reduces the bid price for keywords but increases local conversion rates – a win win for businesses.

Begin your local SEO campaign today and watch your revenue improve as you convert local leads into sales. SEO Works is a full service SEO agency with SEO experts, link building analysts, SEO copywriters and a web development team. Contact them to find out more about how you can put your stamp on local search rankings with cleverly targeted SEO strategies to reach your conversion goals.

Landing pages optimisation is the bridge between your offline and online marketing campaigns and your conversion goals – Here are five ways to optimise your web pages.

Landing pages optimisation is an essential part of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). A landing page is the first page of your website that visitors see when they click-through to your site. Years ago, your key landing page would have been your homepage but now each page on your site should act as a crash pad for incoming visitors, making them feel welcome and comfortable enough to be lead down the path of conversion.

Optimise each page for a different keyword/keyword phrase

Each landing page on your website ideally should be optimised for a keyword or keyword phrase. The keyword should be included in the URL, the meta description, the title tag, headline, anchor text of links, ALT tags, calls to action and naturally positioned through the body content. Be careful not to over-optimise the page with keywords as it may appear to be spam to Search Engines.

Inspire trust and confidence

People visiting your website may be new to your site so first-click impressions count and you need to establish your businesses’ credibility and industry credentials very quickly. If your site is not deemed to be trustworthy or secure, they may just leave it altogether to visit your competitors. Professional design, well written copywriting, quality images, testimonials, case studies and good use of white space all help to build trust in your site.

Tell them what you want them to do

People may have landed on your page from various sources such as a keyword search or email newsletter so it is important to let them know what the purpose of the page is. With landing pages optimisation, find a balance between offering multiple calls to action (CTA) and not overwhelming visitors with too many choices. A CTA gives visitors a clear direction and helps nudge them down the path of conversion.

Give people what they ask for

Whether people have found your site through offline or online marketing campaigns, there is a certain expectation that needs to be met. Don’t over promise and under deliver. If your meta description tag* appearing on Search Engine results says that your landing page will be about a certain topic but the page is deemed not to be relevant by visitors, they may leave your website and you risk losing a potential sale.

Make it easier for your visitors

Usability specialist Jakob Nielsen found in an eye-tracking study that people read websites in an F-shaped pattern and scan pages. This has several implications for landing pages optimisation. The first two paragraphs must state the most important information and it is also important to use sub-headings, paragraphs and bullet points to break up the text and start titles and headings with information-carrying words.

The business analysts at SEO Works are experts in optimising landing pages for their clients to maximise traffic, conversions and profits. It may be an overwhelming task for ecommerce sites that have thousands of pages but done well, it will pay dividends. Contact SEO Works to find out how we can help you with landing pages optimisation to help retain customers, improve your conversion rates and maximise ROI.

*A meta description tag is only a suggested summary for Search Engines and is the text that appears under the search results just below the URL. A Search Engine may pull the snippet from any text on the page.