Coast Digital Blog

Building your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy is a complicated process. It takes experience, time and dedication to ensure your website is found in the major search engines – it doesn’t happen overnight.

If you’re considering outsourcing to support your SEO strategy, here are some things to consider when shopping around for the right online marketing agency. 

Research phase

• When looking you may wish to employ an agency offering a range of online marketing such as email, pay per click (PPC), website usability, and web design in addition to SEO. Most online marketing agencies offer a variety of services in-house.
• This is a no brainer really, but once you’ve selected a potential agency type their name into any of the major search engines. If the agency’s name doesn’t appear on page one in Google they obviously haven’t got their act together.
• Ask suppliers and peers in your industry for recommendations or the name of the marketing agency they’re using. You may find the same one pops up a few times.
• Make sure you take a good look at their website. Always check out their case studies and latest news sections. Sometimes there’s a ‘meet the team’ section; it’s always good to learn more about who you could be working with.

Meeting the online marketing agency

• If you can, ensure you meet face-to-face with prospective agencies, taking the time to meet them properly. After all, you’re deciding whether to place your online business in their hands. I believe it’s essential to meet the team who’ll be implementing your SEO strategy.
• Request an overview/proposal from the agency of what they would do to build on your SEO strategy and find out more about what work needs to be done.
• Always ask about white hat and black hat practices. All SEO specialists/agencies should be able to explain briefly how they’ll approach SEO for your particular type of business. You should ensure they’ll take an ethical approach or you could run the risk of your website getting blacklisted. For example, if an agency says they’ll get you onto page one instantly in natural search you should ask them how, as this is entirely unrealistic. Ensure white hat practice is involved especially at this early stage.
• Any good online marketing agency will want to evaluate and ask what your overall marketing and sales objectives are. You should expect lots of intelligent questions about your plans.

Your chosen online marketing agency

• Get a contract in place. Always set goals and objectives. This way you can easily review any progress the agency makes.

And to conclude

Please keep this in mind: Choose an online marketing agency which fits well with your business and offers the full range of services you require. 

Good luck!

Here are my top 5 basic SEO tips to help your website perform better in the search engines and to help you improve on your current high position in the search results.

1) Content
2) Links – deep links
3) Domain names and file names
4) Tags – Meta, H1, Alt
5) Tracking – Webmaster tools and analytics

1) Content

Everyone should know by now that good quality content is essential to gain a high position in the search results. Ideally all content should be unique; not stuffed with keywords; and written for the user and not the search engine.

An easy way to find out if your content is unique is to do a search in Google using some of your content. If you put the search in inverted commas (“your content”) Google will return the websites it has indexed with the same content.

As for keyword stuffing there are plenty of tools out there that will show you the percentage of keywords on your page, you should aim for no more than 8%.

2) Links

Link building is still one of the most important aspects of SEO, as the number of backlinks you have is an indication of the popularity or importance of your website.

It’s important to remember that the best backlinks will be from sites that have relevant information about what your site is about, the more relevant the better as Google rates this very highly.

For example, there’s not much point in linking to a site about a local football team from a hair and beauty site. In an ideal world the links you get will be from similar or complementary sites. When looking for backlinks, searching for sites that appear for keywords you want is a good starting point.

But where should the backlinks point to? The answer is the most relevant pages on your site; you should put as much focus on deep-linking to good quality pages within your site as you do on your homepage links.

3) Domain names and file names

There’s lots of scope for SEO around URLs. Google guidelines suggest that you build a brand, but nevertheless keyword rich domains do well in search for the keywords in the domain name… if the SEO is done right.

As for file names they should be based around the top level keywords for that page, there’s no reason to give pages or files random names. If a page is based around keyword content, then the filename should contain that keyword.

For example, a page that has content about blue widgets should use the file name: ../blue-widgets.htm. This is one way of telling the search engine that this page is about blue widgets. One point I will make here is you should try to use hyphens in filenames; it’s well documented that this is best practice.

4) Tags – Meta, H1, Alt

There are certain tags you should be using to full effect as part of your on-page SEO; these include META tags (Title, Description and Keywords), the H1, H2 and H3 tags and Image Alt tags.

META Tags (Title, Description and Keywords)

Title tag should be descriptive, and contain your most important keyword/keyword phrase for that page/content (max 80 characters).

Description tag allows you to control the depiction of your page as some search engines use this text below your title in the search results. The text used should be persuasive and to-the-point to attract users, but also contain keywords relevant to page content (between 150 and 200 characters).

Keywords tag as the name suggests, this tag should contain keywords and keyword phrases relevant to the page content. But try not to include the same word more than 7 times as this can be seen as spammy (max 20 keywords/phrases).

H1, H2, H3 tags

Unlike META tags, these sit in the main body of content on your site and function as level headings for documents, with H1 being the top level, working down to H6 as the lowest level heading or sub heading for content.

So how do you use the H tag? In terms of SEO generally we would recommend that the title of the page is replicated in the H1 tag, then use variations or extended longtail search keywords in the rest of the H tags you use on your page. Normally we only use H1, H2 and H3.

Alt text

As highlighted in a previous post Image alt text in search engine optimisation Alt text is an important tag for image search, but can also provide on-page SEO content delivering useful information to search engines.

5) Tracking

Tracking and stats should form a big part of your SEO as you need to know who is backlinking to you; where traffic is coming from; what keywords people are using; and most importantly your conversion rate.

Google has some great free software; web-based Google Analytics gives you great tracking and stats information you can plug into your current Adwords PPC account.

Also an absolute must is Google Webmaster Tools, which allows you to make your site more Google-friendly; upload sitemaps; get Google’s view of your site; and find out about any potential problems.

To conclude, there are many things that influence SEO, but if you get the basics right you have a much greater chance of achieving a high position in the search results. But always keep in mind you should try to produce a website aimed at users, which gives the best user experience, rather than just attempt to influence search engines and their spiders. This approach always delivers the best results.

Blogs are great when you have a real passion for writing something, whether it's for business or pleasure. And blogs are a great online marketing tool; the best will draw a large audience, and will boost your SEO activity.

Here are my 10 golden rules for blogging:

• Be very clear of your aims and objectives for the blog.
• Keep it simple and focused – try to avoid corporate speak or industry jargon – it's not just another website.
• Be passionate and authoritative but with an element of fun. 
• Update your blog regularly. On average I recommend twice weekly.
• Create fresh, eye-catching content – originality is key – be passionate in what you want to say.
• Be honest if your blog relates to your products and services.
• Encourage conversation; invite and encourage fellow-bloggers to comment, and listen to what they have to say. Invite guests onto your blog.
• Bloggers hate being sold to, so avoid using hard sell tactics.
• Add inbound and outbound links to your site. The idea is to entice people to your website.
• Socialise with other bloggers and encourage them to communicate your key messages.

Let’s face it, building good quality and relevant links to your website is an integral part of any SEO strategy. Link building should be a large part of your ongoing SEO tasks, and everyone has their own methods and places to go to get them.

It’s easy though, to run out of ideas once you’ve been building links for a few months and exhausted your regular resources.

Take a look at a few of our ideas to give you extra oomph in link building.

Social bookmarking
Social bookmaking sites such as del.icio.us, Simpy and Furl allow you to ‘bookmark’ web pages online. Google indexes each user’s bookmarks, and therefore any bookmarks for your site get picked up as inbound links. It’s quick, easy and effective, you can deep-link to pages in your site, and you control the anchor text.

Another great thing about social bookmarking is that when you post a bookmark, it will appear in the ‘latest bookmarks’ page. This will open it up to the rest of the networks users.

Industry blogs and forums
Get involved in all the industry forums and blogs that you possibly can. If possible add your site to the footer of your posts. Not only you can get involved in interesting industry discussions, increase your knowledge base, and grow your industry contacts, but it means building inbound links to your site as well.

“My industry is very niche; there isn’t an industry blog/forum.” Start one! However small your industry is, you’ll find you’re not the only person who wants to talk about it online. Starting your own blog/forum also allows you to have much greater control over the content.

Link baiting
Let the links come to you! Link baiting is all about attracting links the natural way. Add some good quality content to your site that someone will enjoy (or hate) enough to link to it. Write something that will generate interest from your users, or other industry websites. Whether it is a controversial theory, or giving something for (essentially) nothing, as long as it gets you noticed, you’ll more than likely get links.

This is much more difficult than it sounds. If you’re stuck for link baiting ideas, check out this article on the art of link baiting. It gives a comprehensive look at the different types of link bait.

It has immerged this week after much speculation that Microsoft has begun offering 2 SEO packages to anyone who owns a website.

This is an interesting move from the computing giant as they also own one of the 3 major search engines.

The service they offer looks to be fairly comprehensive, it includes reviews of:

• Site design, aesthetics and usability
• Titles, meta info, headers, keyword density, pages indexed
• URL structure, redirects, sitemaps, 404 error pages
• Inbound links and link building suggestions
• Keyword research
• Current rankings
• Competitors for your keyword targets

It seems to me though that most of the above will be automated reports from programmes designed to analyse the elements in question.

Depending on the size of your wallet you get some or all of the above. You also get 1-3 hours consulting time with an SEO expert.

The packages range in price from $5,500 to $8,600 which seems a lot for just 1-3 hours of time with a real person, after all, there’s only so much a program can tell you about a site.

It will be interesting to see how this service takes off, and whether they optimise sites towards Google’s website guidelines or for their own search engine.

The ever-growing SEO team at Coast Digital is always keen to tell our readers of recent experiences in developing natural results for our clients.

A recent case is a good example of how one business had made the mistake of applying CSS to hide text content off-page on their website.

The content wasn't necessarily put in place to cheat search engines, but more to focus on the design elements of the website in question, which features lots of nice graphics and visual impact. Unfortunately in this instance the hidden text resulted in a black mark from Google.
 
In adherence with Google's guidelines on not hiding content we’re always keen to emphasise to clients the importance of how each web page should deliver genuine content that can be read on screen.

Implementing ethical SEO is often a balancing act, as you don’t want to completely overhaul an eye-catching website design with piles of text or headings.

Below is an example of CSS hiding content off-page:

.hidden {
            position: centre;
            left: 0px;
            top: -1000px;
            width: 1px;
            height: 4px;
            overflow: hidden;

The above CSS would be considered bad practice SEO. If a visitor can trawl through the page coding and locate this information then you are guaranteed that the search engine robots and spiders can too.

Before Coast Digital became involved in the SEO of this particular domain its natural listings were in a state of limbo, as Google wasn't prepared to issue competitive page 1 / position 1 listings, despite a strong inbound link popularity to the domain.

Removing the black mark against your website in Google can take time. Coast Digital recommends the following strategies to get your website back on the right track:

• Remove all hidden CSS immediately
• Replace hidden CSS with genuine on-page headings and content
• Publish visible content your reader will want to read
• Submit your website to Google Webmaster Tools
• Submit your website to Yahoo! Search Submit
• Focus off-page SEO efforts on building quality, related inbound links to your website
   
  If things are still looking bleak then request reconsideration from Google. 

This post has one essential theme for you to take on board....
 
People use search engines using words. Search engines find and index relevant content using words. Design and develop your website using words not images.
 
Put words at the centre of everything you do when designing and building a website and the signs are good that you will develop a website that caters for a wide range of user types, including search engine robots.

If you consider robots just as you would a visitor, using accessibility settings/features and search engine optimisation (SEO) should become an easier concept to get your head around.
 
A simple concept - use words
A large part of building a search-friendly website involves putting words onto the page. For example, wherever possible design and build a webpage using:

• text for the navigation (even if supplementary to a main, image-based navigation)
• text for the links (not a graphical button of 'read more' etc), and 
• text for the content (not just big pretty pictures)

There are grounded reasons for images
Of course there are compelling reasons to include images within a website - primarily for the creation of a visually appealing and engaging user experience.

Another common use of images is to display products to the end-user, perhaps in a lifestyle scenario to create interest and desire. Other uses for imagery in a website include its use in the primary navigation: (example: apple.com).     

 
If the navigation's visual appeal can’t be achieved through CSS (and with an experienced designer it normally can), an image-based navigation might be required.

However, if you go down this image route, ensure that it is backed up with both descriptive alt text (and no, don't think you can stuff keywords into the ALT text - you'll be caught for spamming) and secondary navigation that is based on links.
 
Some may suggest that navigation based on text might not be the most visually appealing, but it does help both the user reliant on (or choosing to use) accessible forms of navigation. And indirectly this helps search engines to crawl and index a website.... to repeat 'search engines use words and word phrases to index a website.'
 
Searching the web using images
Of course search engines are getting smarter, and in Chris's recent post on our blog about using image ALT text in search engine optimisation, Matt Cutts of Google alludes to some of the challenges facing Google with image-based search.

However, currently even the might of Google cannot review and index an image on its visual merits alone. Instead, Google encourage you to name the image filename accurately/descriptively and include some helpful/assistive image alt-text.

Remember - search engines use words because people search using words
Above all else - focus on the words on the page. Deliver great text-based content and only use images to display the product or describe the lifestyle. Moreover, focus on the content on your website before you worry yourself with gaining links to your website.

This week in the Coast Digital office, over a myriad of cups of industrial strength coffee, we've been discussing and dissecting an increasingly common SEO scenario - how best to manage an online presence across multiple top level domains.

In this article, I'll try to uncover some truths and dispel some of the myths associated with obtaining SEO results, not only in the SERPS on Google.com, but for country-specific search too.

The problem
Take brand XYZ (fictional, for arguments sake – so don’t go searching), who have a website at XYZ.com, it's ranking nicely in Google for their pre-determined keywords, and has done so for quite some time. Business is booming, and XYZ have decided to branch out into the foreign – yet still Anglophone – market of New Zealand. To this end they have registered the domain XYZ.co.nz.

Our big question now rears its ugly head. How do XYZ ensure maximum SEO for their extra domain? And now that they are an international player how do they continue to appear to the widest, most relevant audience possible?

There are a number of technical points to bear in mind to continue getting the best from SEO at an international level. With these in place it’s possible to ensure a high profile in search across any number of new, international domains.

1. Server level redirects
It is possible to redirect one page to another using a 301 or 302 server redirect. A 301 will tell the search engines that a page has moved permanently. Many hosts provide a URL forwarding system which uses a 302 redirect - this tells search engines that the page has temporarily moved.

But some search engines struggle to cope with this redirection and go on to spread popularity between the old and new sites, rather than just indexing the new one. The 301 is the more favourable of the two from an SEO point of view, however, a redirect alone won’t guarantee a listing for the New Zealand domain XYZ.co.nz in local search.

2. Hosting location
For the best results from SEO for a new international domain, a widely-recognised approach is to choose a hosting solution located in the country you are targeting, in our hypothetical example, XYX.co.nz in New Zealand.

Google uses IP data to determine the geographic location of servers hosting all the websites it indexes. This means that it is possible to plan ahead, arrange hosting in the desired locale and reap the benefits.

But it is important to be aware that some hosts have offices in one country and hosting equipment and servers in another. This pitfall makes it easy to be misled, so it's wise to check before you sign up for a particular hosting solution.

Another important factor to remember is that the geographic location of the DNS record appears to carry a greater weighting then the actual location of the content host.

3. Link neighbourhood
Possibly the most crucial factor in getting listed in Google’s country-specific search results is developing a strong set of region-specific inbound links.

The number of these inbound links to the site will have a significant effect on the results in Google. In our example, a handful of inbound links from authoritative sites in New Zealand would have the effect of introducing the domain into the local search results pages.

Location-specific business directories are a very effective source for obtaining this type of link.

4. Duplicate or unique content
The debate around Google’s requirement for unique content to achieve good SERPs positions continues. In the case of brand XYZ there are many content options to consider – I’ll run through a few of the choices available:

• Duplicate the home page from the .com site to the .co.nz, and refer ‘internal’ links to the .com site.
• Duplicate the home page and any significant pages containing keywords from the .com to the .co.nz, and refer remaining internal links to the .com site.
• Duplicate the whole site from the .com domain, so that it is mirrored on both servers.
  Rewrite content on the home page to make it unique to the locale in question, and redirect remaining links to the .com domain.
• Rewrite content on the home page and any significant pages containing keywords from the .com and refer remaining internal links to the .com site.
• Rewrite the entire site content to make it unique to the locale in question. Include local specific meta data, page titles, addresses, telephone numbers, spelling and colloquialisms.
• Use the ‘NoFollow’ attribute on links to the .com site from the .co.nz site for any one of the aforementioned solutions.

Obviously there are a lot of possibilities – although not all of them are best practice. Ideally we would suggest rewriting the whole of a site's contents to target the specific locale, however, this is not a realistic option if we are talking about 2000+ pages of content.

One useful trick is to set the footer template to contain the address of (in the case of our example) the New Zealand office, which will display on every page. Essentially, the 'duplicate content penalty' isn't going to be too horrific where a website is duplicated in part on a different top level domain – essentially duplication on this level is quite a natural phenomenon, and should be handled with ease by Google.

5. Webmaster tools
It is possible to clarify any intentions by managing both domains in the same Google Webmaster Tools account, and using the tools available to specify each website's country targeting.

This relatively recent addition to the toolset provides the most straightforward method of informing Google of this scenario. The use of this feature, combined with careful hosting choices, localised inbound link acquisitions and unique content, should result in maximum visibility for the brand, locally and internationally.

1. Remember a sitemap has a dual purpose

At Coast Digital we’ve always advocated the use of website sitemaps. As a sitemap.html/.xml file has historically been the best way to inform search engine robots of all – or at least, the most important – web pages on a site.

Placing a sitemap link in the footer of pages is simply good practice search engine marketing, but it’s also worth remembering a sitemap can function as a powerful user navigation tool too.

In the same way that as users we expect to find a homepage link at the top-left of a web page (or linked from a company's logo), and an ‘about us’ link in the top navigation bar towards the right-hand side, we may also reasonably expect to find a sitemap link in the footer.

We don't write the rules though, and as Jakob Neilson helpfully points out in his book 'Homepage Usability', your website will almost certainly not be the first a user has visited. In fact chances are they’ll have visited thousands before they arrive at your site.

Over time web users inevitably build up preconceptions. So it’s worth remembering that the less a user has to think about your layout the more time they can spend accessing your information and products. Why distract them with a convention-breaking design when all you are going to do is provoke frustration?
 
2. Remember to display a link to your sitemap

When optimising a website for search engines it can be easy to lose sight of your objectives. Sure, it’s great to get a good position in the search engine results pages (SERPs), but the ultimate goal is for users to easily find the most relevant pages on your site.

Sitemaps are often hidden or put 'behind' a website because they generally appear as a series of categorised links, and the visual value isn’t immediately apparent. In fact sitemap layouts often don’t reveal a hierarchy of importance.

If certain pages are more important than others or contain account or profile details requiring frequent access, then developing a visually appealing sitemap or even a mini-sitemap to signpost on every page is a good solution.
 
3. Use sitemaps and mini-sitemaps to assist navigation

You'd be amazed at the usage website footers get in terms of navigation. There are reports of 65-70% of a website's total navigation being via sitemap footers.

If you think about it, it makes sense; header navigation is often used to promote products. Instead mini-sitemap footers such as the examples below - from Apple.com, LinkedIn.com and Waterscape.com - help new and existing web visitors quickly identify the important parts of a website.

• In the case of Apple, the user is shown a link to important Apple products, accessories and software.
• For LinkedIn, important service elements such as how to find an individual’s profile, or set-up/manage an account are given emphasis.
• In the Waterscape example, the sitemap footer is used to promote specific regions and activities. 
   

Apple.com

LinkedIn.com

Waterscape.com

4. Think about the added benefits of a mini-sitemap

More and more websites – especially blogs – are using streamlined or mini-sitemaps in their footers. Personally, I think they provide some solid benefits:

• By incorporating only relevant links, mini-sitemaps provide a great user experience.
• A mini-sitemap quickly enables new users. It makes clear what a website does and the content it contains.
• A mini-sitemap acts as a quick-link navigation tool for existing users.
• Links on every page inform search engines about which pages – in the opinion of the website owner – are the most important.
• A footer sitemap will help the webmaster to quickly add more links to a page.
• The links in a sitemap can contain helpful anchor text describing the linked pages, which will further assist with SEO.

As search marketing specialists we regularly come across potential clients who are interested in search engine optimisation (SEO) services. Many of these have already invested heavily in ‘all-singing-all-dancing’ websites, and then as almost an afterthought consider looking into search marketing.

As a result we're often faced with websites that look great but just aren’t search engine-friendly, or even user-friendly for that matter. It can be difficult to break it to the client that their new website needs extensive work, especially if a vast amount of money may have already been spent.

When we encounter this situation we work with both parties to achieve a search-friendly website by either advising the design agency on changes, or by implementing them ourselves – with permission of course. But you may be thinking how can this be avoided?

Think of SEO at design concept

The most important time to think of search engine marketing for your future website is at the design stage. Make sure your design agency has the knowledge and skill to build a search engine-friendly site. Ask to see examples of their work. You may find that they are not as well equipped as you first thought, or as they may have claimed.

Power to the people

If you’re having an e-commerce site built, especially if it’s going to be powered by a CMS, (content management system) make sure you have full control.

Check that you can make the following changes freely:

• Define META data for individual product pages and site content
• Incorporate a proper content structure using Headings (H1, H2 etc)
• Add pages freely to your site navigation and/or other navigation modules (i.e. footer links)

Summary

As we have seen, many make the mistake of focusing mainly on the design of their new website, neglecting search engine optimisation at what can be great expense. Make sure you pick a design agency carefully and ensure they build you a search-friendly site that can be optimised in the future, either by yourself or a search marketing agency.

If you find yourself in a situation where your site needs extensive SEO work then don’t despair, Coast Digital are highly experienced and capable, and can help guide you through the necessary changes.