Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Businesses on the Internet

Getting your website found online is more important than ever!

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is the technique of making a website achieve higher positioning on a Search Engine’s organic listings, when a user searches on terms related to the site’s content. SEO provides improved marketing ROI (Return On Investment) due to its cost-effective nature and should not be considered an expense. It is a necessity for every business online today.

Why Do I Need Search Engine Optimisation?

In these modern times of digital communications, most people now use the convenient solution of the Internet to seek their consumer needs, before even thinking about looking through the Yellow ‘Snail’ Pages and picking up the phone. Having websites displayed instantly in a Search Engine provides necessary information on products and services so people can assess their options and make a decision, before making contact. Given that more than three-quarters of all Internet users discover websites through Search Engines, it is paramount that your business be prominently listed within these engines and directories.

Real Example. Your customer searches for your product or service in a Search Engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing), which then delivers them a listing of websites most relevant to their Search Query. Is your website one of those results?? If you haven’t done any Search Engine Optimisation, the answer is NO. So how will anyone find you after you’ve paid all that money on a good looking website? Imagine making up some brochures for your business and then leaving them hidden in the office. How will your website of products and services reach your prospects, competing with the millions of sites on the Internet today. Is there any value in putting a billboard in the forest?!

And it’s not about reaching just a few more customers. With the connectivity of the Internet, your business can be listed in front of the whole local, national and worldwide audience of consumers seeking your products and services. Are your top competitors doing SEO? No doubt they’ll be thinking about it, if not already doing it. If you want to keep up with the competition and be at the forefront of your industry, Search Engine Optimisation on your website should be started immediately.

Hiring a professional SEO service is critical for achieving the best results and staying ahead of your competition, as ranking factors continue to change and are becoming increasingly difficult to understand. A good SEO should only implement ‘white-hat’ SEO methods, ensuring your site adheres to the guidelines set out by the Search Engines and doesn’t get penalised or banned from their indexes. Many Webmasters and SEO companies use ‘black-hat’ SEO methods, meaning they use short hand techniques, cut corners and try to slip past the Engines in the hope to rank quicker than normal. It can sometimes work, but not for too long. Google will quickly see this and penalise the site accordingly.

The best SEO results are derived from continual steady work, over a long period of time. It makes sense, because Google is a business too and want to give their customers (searchers) the best user experience possible so they keep using their services. Only websites that are genuine in intent and have the best quality content will enjoy a long life at the top of the internet.

Yahoo may be putting 50 of its properties on the chopping block as new CEO Scott Thompson looks to make the once-dominant internet portal a little leaner and more nimble, but apparently small businesses are important enough to Yahoo that it will create new products.

Today, Yahoo did just that by launching an online dashboard designed specifically for small businesses.

The Yahoo Marketing Dashboard allows small business owners to view their sites’ traffic, keep track of their search rankings and monitor buzz on 8,000 sites, including Twitter and Facebook. Yahoo bills it as the “one place” to “get a clear picture of your marketing results and reputation.”

The base offering is free, but Yahoo is offering a number of premium add-ons for a fee. For $ 19.99 per month, for instance, a business owner could expand the amount of data visible through the aforementioned reputation monitoring feature. And Yahoo is trying to bring search submission back; for $ 9.99 per month, Yahoo says it will submit a company’s website to over 100 search engines and directories.

The latter is somewhat cringe-worthy, and raises questions about just how valuable Yahoo’s new offering is. On the other hand, there are aspects to Yahoo’s offering that it appears the company got right. For example, recognizing that Google Analytics is extremely popular, Yahoo’s dashboard allows businesses to pull in their Google Analytics data.

Yahoo’s motivation in launching a marketing dashboard for small businesses isn’t that difficult to grasp: small business is of great importance to Yahoo and its competitors, such as Google. But serving small business and keeping a small business customer happy can be difficult.

“The number of online marketing options are growing…It seems like a new company or a new way of reaching consumers emerges each day, and for small businesses who don’t have agencies or a lot of background support, this proliferation of options is pretty challenging to manage,” Yahoo’s director of product marketing for Yahoo Small Business, Shannon Parker Hane, stated.

Any company that can successfully help small businesses many those challenges has the opportunity to do very well. Time will tell whether Yahoo becomes such a company, but as it tries to reinvent itself, trying to cozy up to small business probably isn’t the worst idea.

Posts from the Econsultancy blog

Planning to get away this spring? Want to see your destination–rather than just read about it? You’re not alone. According to our research, nearly half of all travelers watch a travel video online when planning a trip.

YouTube is full of travel-related information from how to ride the Metro in Paris on the GeoBeats Channel to packing tips from travel guru Rick Steves. For businesses looking to reach future travelers video can help visualize destinations and services. Check out a few travel businesses already turning video views into reservations.

Take, for example, Airbnb, a travel business connecting hosts (property managers and owners willing to open their homes to guests) with travelers looking for a home away from home. Their YouTube Channel has gained a large following and millions of video views. By clearly illustrating what they offer and how their service works through how-to videos, such as “How to Airbnb,” they’ve gained credibility and established trust with an active community of intrepid travelers.

As Virgin America announces more U.S. routes they’re using their YouTube Channel to get the word out. Their videos are full of their characteristic quirky humor, like when the infamous Greenman character from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” made an appearance in their video announcing Virgin America’s new Philadelphia route.

With white sandy beaches and sparkling blue waters, the Nassau Paradise Island Promotion Board seems like an obvious fit for online video. But they use video to do more than tempt dreamers looking to escape winter weather. The board uses ads on YouTube to quickly spread relevant news. For example, when an airline recently added new nonstop flights from New York to Nassau, the board was able to show ads about this route to viewers in the New York area – ensuring that they reached the right people with relevant news.

We hope your business can use some of these tips to make your next video campaign take flight! You can learn more about promoting your business, content or cause with online video by joining our conversation on Google+ and adding the YouTube for marketers Google+ page to your circles.

Baljeet Singh, group product manager on video monetization at Google, recently watched “DollarShaveClub.com – Our Blades Are F***ing Great.”

YouTube Blog

Mobile search is a powerful channel for businesses to engage with customers that are searching for them or for their application. Last year, we introduced improvements to click-to-download ads, and for publishers, launched Custom Search Ads for Mobile Apps. Today we’d like to share several new features that will make it even easier for AdWords advertisers to promote, track and monetize their mobile app. For the first time, businesses can use AdWords mobile search ads as a holistic solution to promote, monetize and track their app downloads.

Promote your app using the new Mobile App Extension

All AdWords advertisers will receive the option to use a new Ad Extension – the Mobile App extension; a new way to promote their mobile apps. Not all mobile users searching for a business may know that the business has an app. The Mobile App extension allows advertisers to append a mobile app download link to their search ads. With this extension, advertisers can promote their mobile app to users who may simply be searching for their brand, product or service.

The mobile app extension gives advertisers a new distribution channel for their mobile apps and users a new discovery medium. Beta participants saw a 6% lift in CTR for campaigns using Mobile App extensions, compared to control campaigns.

The new Mobile App Extension found in the “Ad Extensions” tab. Use its new ‘app picker’ function to easily find your company’s app in Google Play Store or iTunes App Store

GrubHub, a web and mobile service that connects diners to restaurants and simplifies online ordering for delivery and pick up, was an early beta tester of the Mobile App extension. In addition to pointing mobile customers searching for food delivery services to their mobile website, they used the mobile app extension to add an additional link to their app download page. Abby Hunt from the GrubHub team explains the importance of reaching customers on mobile: “GrubHub is dedicated to feeding our diners anytime, anywhere – this is why it is important for us to reach our diners on their mobile devices. Hungry people are checking their mobile devices on the way home from work or walking to class, and where they are.”

  

GrubHub was an early tester of the Mobile App extension, allowing hungry customers searching for their business the option of accessing information on their mobile site or app via an ad. 

Enriching click-to-download ads with more useful app information
Advertisers running campaigns solely focused on promoting and driving downloads of their app will benefit from recent changes that add more useful information to their click-to-download ads. Last year, we added mobile app icons next to the text ad. We’ve now incorporated richer information about your mobile app right in the ad unit itself. When a user searches and your click-to-download ad appears, they’ll be able to see image previews, a description of your app, and when applicable, pricing and rating information.

All this new information in the click-to-download ad is automatically drawn from the Google Play Store and iTunes App Store. We hope that customers will benefit from recent changes that make click-to-download ads more engaging and for users searching on Google.

Quicken Loans Inc., the nation’s largest online home lender and a top five retail lender uses click-to-download ads to promote their Mortgage Calculator App. They’ve seen a rapid increase in the number of customer searching for them on mobile. Greg Broda, Paid Search Partner Manager at Quicken Loans explains: “When it came time to promote the new Quicken Loans Mortgage Calculator app, the decision to utilize Google’s mobile click-to-download ad platform was a no-brainer. The placement has allowed us to share the app with a very targeted and engaged group of users.”

Quicken Loans runs click-to-download ads, now complete with app previews and pricing information, that point users to their app download page.

Track Android app downloads through AdWords
Businesses will now be able to track downloads of their Android app from their AdWords campaigns as an AdWords conversion. This means that when a user downloads a mobile app from the Google Play store via a click-to-download ad or a mobile app extension, we will count their download as a conversion. For more information on how to set this up, visit this page.

Monetizing your mobile app with Custom Search Ads for Mobile Apps

We’ve now brought Custom Search Ads to tablet apps via the recent launch of a new AdMob SDK. Tablet and mobile app users will receive ads relevant to what they’re searching for inside an app, and businesses running mobile apps will have a new tool to monetize their content and services.

Mobile apps represent a significant opportunity for businesses to reach their customers, and mobile search is an important channel to reach these customers. We’re looking forward to bringing new products in the coming year that will help businesses grow by promoting, tracking, and monetizing their mobile apps with Google.

Posted by Anurag Agrawal, Product Manager, Mobile Search Ads

Inside AdWords

Search Engine Optimisation For Small Businesses

Less is more

Go to any well known search engine, search for search engine optimisation services and you will find a plethora of internet marketing companies who list what they will do to get your company’s website listed online. But do you really need to pay for all of these services? Or are some of them just listed to make the service seem better value for money? Is this a case of quantity over quality?

One of the services that they offer is “Submission to major search engines”.  I don’t think this is necessary and I actually think it is better to simply submit a sitemap and let the search engines find you naturally. Ironically if you just submit an XML sitemap, websites seem to get listed more quickly. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me, register and host two domains submit the first one to major search engines and submit a sitemap, but just submit a sitemap for the second website. The second website appears to get listed more quickly.

So what does this mean for us? I personally agree that there is no need and, indeed, a negative effect in submitting websites to search engines so advise people against it. So next time you see “Search Engine Submission” on a SEO company’s website ask yourself “Do I really need to pay extra for this service” and “Do they really know what they’re doing”.

How to choose a Search Engine Optimisation company

Do your research before you choose a SEO company then you know what you’re getting is a great service. A good search engine optimiser should be able to justify everything they do to your website. Get to know the differences between Whitehat and Blackhat techniques. After all, you will be ultimately responsible as it is your website and a company that does not play by the rules could get your website banned.

Applying Pareto’s 80/20 rule could also be useful here. Try to visualise your website marketing project in terms of priority tasks. For example:

Search engines give priority to keywords, descriptions, image alt tags and content. So make sure these are right first. Never optimise just for search engines, make sure your website content is relevant to your audience. Afterall, you don’t want a website that ranks highly but no-one sticks around for long on once they find it.
Search engines look for website backlinks. So submit to (relevant directories). Do not trust a search optimisation company that says it submits your website to all directories. You don’t want your Traditional Signwriting website listed on the Yorkshire Food Guide directory. Your website should be submitted to relevant directories only. Any company that submits to all to being lazy using batch processes to save time.
Monitor your results – any search marketing company that claims to get quick results, yesterday is being dishonest. It is impossible. Real SEO takes time, patience and constant tweaking.  The search engines change regularly.  Getting ranked on Google requires a constant effort and staying there is even more difficult. Your competitors have similar ideas to you and are doing all they can to beat you. So be persistent

So you’ve got your website but it isn’t doing very well in the search listing. Do a bit of research, gather some questions together for the search engine optimisation company and climb the search engine rankings.