Choosing the right search engine optimisation (Bristol SEO) firm and online marketing company is the most important phase in your business website’s existence. It is important to align yourself with a company that are good at selling products and services online in order to ensure you reap the benefits that Bristol SEO can truly deliver. Using in house Bristol SEO staff is often flawed so when a business makes the decision to choose an external source for their online marketing solution then I always encourage the company to do a lot of research on the potential firms.

As search engine optimisation (Bristol SEO) requires expertise the first thing I suggest is searching on Google for “Bristol SEO” and “Online Marketing” in your regional index and taking note of the top 5 companies for each search result set. Compare them. Then make a list of the companies that are repeated. The reason I suggest searching on Google is that

- Google holds over 85% of the search market in Australia. I am not sure on other regional areas in the World but as far as I am concerned Google dominate and they have the most advanced search algorithm.

- Any company that can successfully market its own products – Bristol SEO and Online Marketing, and be placed in the top 5 results are very good at online marketing and as these terms are very competitive it is the cream of the crop being listed.

So, now you should contact each of the firms that are repeated in the list and ask to make an appointment with them to discuss how Bristol SEO can best benefit your business website.

As long as you have done the searches above then there are several questions I like to ask at this point.
1. Where do they place in the search engine results pages for their own products? – Bristol SEO and Online/Internet Marketing?
2. Do they have at least 10 examples of Bristol SEO clients in comparable industries (B2B/B2C) that they can show online marketing success with? – look for traffic graphs and keywords being searched on to get to the website.
3. How many staff do the Bristol SEO firm have?
4. Does the Bristol SEO company have 24/7 support and phone contact?
5. Are they professional and expert in their handling of your questions and delivering clear honest answers?
6. Read some of the Bristol SEO firm’s testimonials.

After these questions have been answered then you will generally have a very good idea of how good the company actually is. What their philosophies are and whether they are a good fit for your business website objectives.

There are several things I would also consider very strongly.
- Never trust a company that is willing to make any kind of guarantees on results. There is no way that an Bristol SEO company can know for sure that your website is going to be listed in the top 10 in the search results. If they do make promises then it is likely they will be optimising your website for less than optimal keywords that are uncompetitive. For example you sell “Blue widgets” and you would like to be listed in the top ten for blue widgets but it is very competitive. This dodgy company says they can get you in the top ten, but they don’t say for what keywords and they do deliver but its for a keyword phrase like “blue widget with flowers in Melbourne Australia” – this is completely useless and will not sell any more of your products!!
- Never choose an Bristol SEO firm on price. Trust me when I say this – You get what you pay for! Aligning your business website with the best Bristol SEO firm, which may be more expensive, is going to get you a lot more traffic than a lower ranked Bristol SEO company. A more experienced Bristol SEO firm is likely to have many, many testimonials and graphs of clients to show you. Align with the best Bristol SEO Company and you get the best results it’s as simple as that – there is no doubt in my mind on this.

Now that you have narrowed down the list, take a day to go through all of the information gathered. Assess everything on its merits and choose wisely. As I said above, never choose based on price, you pay peanuts and you will get monkeys. Graphic design and coding the building of a website make up about 20% of the success of the website, the other 80% is getting people to come to your website and buy your product or service. A similar comparison is opening a shop. You can make it as plush and nice as you want inside but if no one is coming through the door then it really doesn’t matter how nice it is does it? You could well have a warehouse and market more and you would likely be far more successful. In summary, align your business website with the best Bristol SEO firm that you can find.

The major players in the search engine world, like Google, Yahoo, Alta-vista and Lycos, all have their own systems for indexing and ranking, so what might be great for one of them, may not be so great for another. As there are millions of web pages competing for the top rankings, there are also lots of companies out there promising to make your site achieve top spot. Lets just stop and think for a minute. As with all business’s in life, you will have your reputable ones, and then you will have the opposite. Can they really achieve what they say they can? We are not doubting that there are a lot of professional companies out there who could do such that, but if you do choose to go down that road, we think you should do your research and choose carefully. There are lot of companies offering to submit web designs to thousands of search engines, but realistically, it is the major search engines you should be interested in.

So how can you get your web site in the higher rankings of the major search engines? That is the million dollar question that everyone wants to know and would like to be done yesterday. The answer is not that easy, but then again it is not impossible.

First of all, consider the field your site is competing in. Obviously the first thing you should be looking at are the sites which are ranked highly. What are they doing that you are not? Take a look at their web site. Are they graphically intense. Do they use frames and so on and so on. Viewing other sites which are top of the pile for your chosen subject will give you an indication of how the search engine indexes and ranks and what criteria it uses.

Now, lets take a look at your site. Keep in the back of your mind what you have learnt from looking at other web designs. How does your compare?

Content within your web design. Has your site sufficient content? Search engines love content. This might be hard to achieve if your web site is just a few pages and is of brochure style. Is the content on your site relevant to the overall criteria of your site?
Inbound and outbound links in your web design structure

Do you have links on your site and do other sites link to yours? Certainly Google will look at this when ranking your site. Google uses a page ranking algorithm and judges the importance of your site with the amount of inbound and outbound links. If you do not have any links, or very little, you will not achieve a high page ranking score, thus affecting your overall ranking.
Graphically intense web design?

Take a look at how you are using graphics on your site. A graphically intense web site results in longer download times and bandwidth consumption. Another downside to using graphics, especially for buttons that link to your pages and other sites, is that search engines don’t really see them. If you are going to use graphics for buttons and links, try and make sure that you use text links somewhere on your pages. That way, the search engine spiders or robots will be able to follow your sites link structure. Another good practise to adopt is to always use the alt tag for your images.
Web designing using frames

Try and avoid frames if you can as search engines do have trouble with framed pages. In our opinion, unless you are really sure of what you are doing, leave frames alone and look for an alternative way of designing web pages for your site.

Utilising meta tags in your web design

Although strictly speaking it is not a meta tag, it is certainly the most important part of your web page. The Title! Having a well written and descriptive title is crucial to search engine optimisation. Google displays a maximum of 66 characters from the Title in their search results. Try and write a title that will catch the eye of the surfer, whilst utilising keywords.

Meta keywords are used by search engine spiders or robots to index your page, so think about the audience you are trying to target. Think of words you would enter into search engines to find a site similar to the yours. Think of other combinations of words. Are you targeting the specific area in which you live? If so, make sure you put your location into the meta keywords. Have a look at the example below:

In our example, this is something which could relate to our site, so be creative and think about keywords that could tell the search engines what your site is about. Do not repeat the same words though and most importantly, ensure that these words you use as keywords, actually appear in the main body of your content. Do not put words that are not in your page content!

The meta description tag is also very important and is used by search engines to inform users what your site is all about. For example:

The text within the meta tag description will be displayed under the title in the search engine ranking, so it is important to be descriptive. We recommend that you use a maximum of 155 characters for the description of your page. A well written description is certainly 100% better than just keyword stuffing.

Although this article is not an exhaustive explanation to search engine submission and search engine optimisation, hopefully you will understand a little more of the complexities of search engines. It is no easy fte to get you web design to the top of the pile, but it is achievable. We will let you know when we achieve it for ours

Over 75% of people now use the internet when looking to buy a product or service. Websites in the top 3 pages of the major search engines gain 90% of search engine traffic. Basically, if you have a website you need to be on the first few pages of the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) to get the traffic.so how do you do this?………. Its not quite as simple as many people believe. I am constantly being asked ” I have just had a website built but do not appear on Google.” Well firstly type in the URL (web address) of your website, if you still do not come up then your site has not been indexed. If your website does appear then previously when you said “I do not appear in Google” what you meant is- you typed in a keyword (a word related to your product/service) and your website did not appear in the top few pages. To be honest, this is very unlikely to happen. Unless you are selling a very unique product with very little competition then your website is likely to be on page 23 or worse!

Everybody with a website would love to be #1 on google for their main keyword, but it takes time and effort. You need to optimise your website for the best chances of achieving this.

After crawling the internet using robots called “spiders”, the SE’s use a complex mathematical formula to “rank” websites on importance and relevance to certain keywords. These formulas are known as “algorithms”. Liverpool SEO describes the techniques that use a knowledge of how SE’s rank websites, to make alterations to a site so that it better “adheres” to the “algorithms”.

There are to main phases to the optimisation process- “on page” and “off page”. On page is the alterations that are made to the physical content of a website and the code that makes up each webpage. This includes intergrating keywords into areas of the site that the SE’s deem important. Off page optimisation is the process of building links to a website…… what this means is getting as many websites to have a link somewhere on their site to the site you are optimising. This is very important because a major part of SE’s “algorithms” is link popularity- the more websites that link to another, the more important it is considered by the SE’s and the higher up it appears in the SERP’s.

Of course there are many more technical issues involved with Search Engine Optimisation but i wont discuss these in this article.. One thing that you should remeber though when thinking about Liverpool SEO is that it certainly is not instant. Due to the way search engines work it may be several months before the friuts of your labour are seen, in the form of higher rankings.Google currently indexes over 8 billion web pages and the ever increasing size of the internet means that the SE’s certainly have their work cut out.

Many companies manage their own Liverpool SEO in house, this can work fine but be willing to put in the time to learn the technicalities. The “nity gritty” of it can be slighly overwhelming as it is quite a specialist, technical field.

You might think you already know everything about search engine optimisation process. Well, think again. Some of the things you know may just be myths. There are several Manchester SEO myths that webmasters and search engine optimisers still fail to recognise. What are the Manchester SEO myths? Here are the top 25:

1.Search engine optimisation can be performed just by anyone.
2.Manchester SEO is only for those websites who sell products online.
3.Manchester SEO companies can give their clients a guaranteed top ranking position.
4.Manchester SEO gives an overnight result. You can optimise a website today and expect it rank high tomorrow.
5.Build more links irregardless of the quality.
6.It is fine to copy content from other websites and paste it on your own website.
7.There is no need for you to write unique content for your website since you can just syndicate articles from directories.
8.There is no need for further work after you have optimised your website.
9.Search engine ranking is all that matters.
10.The more links the better, quantity matters and not quality.
11.There is no need for a website to be submitted to web directories.
12.A website doesnt need updated content.
13.The search engines wont know if you use black hat Manchester SEO techniques.
14.Do it yourself Manchester SEO is better than hiring Manchester SEO professionals can be true if you are an expert yourself.
15.Web design doesnt need to be optimised.
16.The navigability of the website has no effect on its search engine ranking.
17.The search engines must be prioritised than the target market.
18.There is no need for testing, once a website is already optimised let it stay that way.
19.Site visitors already know how to browse a website so dont worry about usability.
20.Flash is the best way to present your message.
21.You can write anything that you want in your website content.
22.There is no need for you to add keywords on the website content.
23.Adding more large-file images on the website makes the site more appealing.
24.It doesnt matter if the website is slow to load, after all, there are now more broadband users than dial ups.
25.Why still optimise a website when it can still be indexed by the search engines no matter what?

These are the top 25 search engine optimisation myths that both webmasters and search engine optimiser must be aware of. Some of them seem to be like a fact rather than a myth, so be very careful.

1. Keyword Selection

The most important point out of the three is keyword selection. If you end up selecting keywords that do not have any/few searches, then you are simply wasting time by optimising for them. There is no point in being ranked number one for a keyword when there are no searchers for that term. A good place to start is by using keyword research tools such as Wordtracker, Overture Keyword Assistant and Keyword Discovery, to find out what people are typing into search engines. Once you have found those terms, the next step is to work out the level of competition and effort it will take to get a reasonable rank for each term. The best way is to look at the number of competing pages in search engines for each keyword and how many incoming links the top ten websites have (Marketleap link popularity checker is a good tool for that). If you have the knowledge and time, you may want to go for the slightly more competitive keywords.

2. Good On-the-Page and Off-the-Page Structure

For on-the-page factors, making sure that there is a sufficient amount of text based content, title tags and a strong internal linking between all web pages, is a good start. Title tags and content should contain keywords provided that they are not stuffed into the text. For example, if your keyword is dog supplies, this sort of writing should be avoided:

We base our business on dog supplies and have a great range of dog supplies. Check out our latest dog supplies today!

A visitor will be immediately turned off from this sort of writing and will question the credibility of your site. Keywords should be written around the content, not the other way around.

Off-the-page factors relates to reducing code within your web pages (placing code into external files, such as JavaScript and Style Sheets) and having a website design where search engines can index all your content.

3. Incoming Links

Attaining incoming links to your website has become a more heavily relied upon factor in last couple of years. Each incoming link is seen by search engines as a vouch from another site. The more incoming relevant links you have, the more trusted your website becomes by search engines. This does not mean you can simply acquire a bunch of links from any site. Links need to relevant in the sense that the website linking to you has some sort of affiliation with your theme otherwise the links will not benefit you.

Provided you stick to the three basic key points of search engine optimisation, in time you will notice a stronger website presence in the search engines. Whist it can be done on your own if you have the knowledge and time, hiring an Liverpool SEO agency is one avenue to success if you have the budget. Having said that, time should not be spared in taking advantage of the vast opportunities the internet can bring you and your business.

I have compiled a list of some of some common Search Engine Optimization (Birmingham SEO) mistakes.

1. Bad Titles. Titles are the most important thing about a webpage. Search engines spiders see the title on your page first and they make a general assessment about it based upon this. They scan the page and make sure the content of the page matches the title and then assign rankings based upon these matches and how they best fit. The title tag is the best way to inform the search engine what your page is about, and they play an important part in ranking if used properly. Placing your main identified keywords in the title and ensuring to obey the rule of leftward and stemming is vital – leftward rule, the closer the word to the left of the sentence the more important it is, stemming is where words can be associated but with words in-between i.e.: Great Blue Widgets when stemmed would allow Great Widgets. It is important to ensure your title matches your page content, description and Meta keywords and in unique for your website. Every page title and content should be unique otherwise is will be ranked supplemental.

2. Filename of the page. It is important if you are using dynamic websites like Joomla or other content management systems that a search engine friendly URL translator is installed. Because I use Joomla every day I will describe what I mean relating to Joomla. In Joomla (and most other dynamic websites) URL’s like the normal Joomla URL “index.php?option=com_mtree&task=listcats&cat_id=1766&Itemid=35″ drive the website. The problem with these URL’s is that they are unintelligible by humans and also by search engines. Installing a search engine friendly URL component will change these pages to something more meaningful and also including your keywords in these page names can help with Birmingham SEO. The newly transformed search engine friendly URL would look like this “buy-blue-widgets.html”. If you do not have a dynamic website then ensuring your page name is short, to the point and contains your main keywords for that page maybe with a call to action like “buy” and “blue widgets”.

3. Duplicate or Bad Content. Ensuring your content is unique and relevant is vital in Birmingham SEO success. Often websites just duplicate content or bring in plagiarized content from other websites. It is my experience that these websites fail dismally in search engine rankings. Write some decent and unique content or maybe search online and find someone who can actually write you decent unique content for a fee. Make it good, friendly and unique content that people will want to link to. If you are listed in the supplemental index of Google then making sure you titles, descriptions, Meta keywords and on page content is unique is the only way to drag them out of the supplemental index.

4. No Links. Having covered off a few of the on page most important Birmingham SEO tips we now look at links, which are an off page Birmingham SEO concept. For each person or website that links to your website it is a vote for your site. If the website that links to yours has a high pagerank itself then it carries more weight. Simply having good keywords, titles and text on your page is only part of Birmingham SEO. Just because you created a unique and perfectly optimized webpage does not mean you will automatically gain a decent pagerank for that page. In order to ensure Birmingham SEO success you have to create incoming links – this is probably the hardest part of search engine optimization because you are effectively selling your pages all over the Internet. One way to gain instant (within a few weeks) links is to pay for text advertising – A search on Google will uncover some of the best text linking services. Link exchanges are bad because for every vote you get you are giving one away and if you happen to link to a “black listed” site then Google will penalize you significantly. One way links are the ultimate in Birmingham SEO link campaigns so seek out directories (either paid or free, you need to evaluate), post in forums, write articles and submit them and ask other friendly webmasters if they can help you out with a link. The best way to gain links is to have unique content that other people actually want to link to.

5. Incoming link anchor text. Having pointed out how important it is to gain incoming links it is now important to also point out that the text those links are anchored to is important also. The text should be targeted at your main keywords and the page they point to should have those keywords as relevant and prominent also. The website you link from should be relevant to your website. So, as an example I own a web design company in Melbourne, Australia so I gain links from web hosting providers and/or open source Joomla sites in or around my region. Getting 1000 links from a casino related website will serve no benefit to my website and will not make it rank higher for “web design” keyword search terms. Use professional common sense when gaining links.

6. Bad Internal Page Links. We return to on page factors that you can work on within your website. It is important to make sure that the anchor text linking to pages within your own website is relevant to the target page. Make sure the title tag is filled in also for each link. You have the greatest control over links from within your own web site so make sure they are relevant and that link title and the on page copy match the main keywords of the target page.

7. Live links. Using some external tools like the link checker that W3 Org offer is good. I suggest harnessing as many tools as you can to ensure all of the links on your website are live, working and not sending people to 404 error pages. It is also important to check and make sure your page markup, or html, xhtml, is valid so W3 also offer a tool to check this. Make use of both of these freely available tools.

8. Impatience. Search Engine Optimization is not a short term task. It is one of an ongoing refinement after refinement and hour after hour of working on your website. Producing unique content, checking it, validating, listing and checking the search engines and making sure they have it listed correctly. Do not think for one second that you can optimize your site thoroughly ever and do not ever think that just because you are number one for a search term that it will indefinitely stay that way. Search Engine Companies are always changing their ranking and rating systems and coupled with this there are always other people out there gunning for your top spot. Keep looking to improve and learn more and don’t sit back and wait for others to take your top spot, be proactive, seek out new content, links and keep ahead of the curve.

9. Keyword selection. This is proving to be a very common mistake among beginners to Birmingham SEO. Often people base their own keyword selection on what they *think* is right but is this what people actually search for when they are looking for your product or service? Often the answer to this questions is no. It is an important step to do the correct keyword research and ensure you have the right keyword list before you optimize any pages with them. Using Overture, Google Adwords and some other paid keyword tools like WordTracker (the default standard in Keyword Finding) are vital to success in finding good keywords. It is important to localize your target market and figure out what they are actually searching on when they are looking for products or services that you offer. Do the research and be as specific as possible while still being broad enough to capture some high keyword traffic.

10. Keyword Spamming and Stuffing. If you sell “Blue Widgets” then every page of your site does not need to have “Blue Widgets” in the title, description and Meta tags. Try and be objective and analyze you website. Focus pages on a specific group of keywords you have identified from the keyword list. Sometimes finding niche markets locally first can be best. So, as an example, “Buy Blue Widgets Australia” or “Buy Blue Widgets Melbourne”. These would be examples of good second or even third tier search keyword phrases but you can make some good sales with these niche terms because the searcher is targeting buying these items.

These are not the be-all and end-all of Search Engine Optimization mistakes but I have found these to be the main mistakes made by my clients prior to Kanga Internet being involved. Good luck and I wish you all the best with your Birmingham SEO efforts.

Search engine promotion involves promoting your website through various online channels in order to increase visibility and your potential to receive a higher page ranking or position within the search engine results pages. Common search engine promotion campaigns include article marketing, press release, optimization and submissions.

Search engine promotion is the process of improving rankings, visitor numbers and utilizing search engines to promote brand awareness. Every activity whose purpose is to promote a site and provide hits through search engines comes under the orb of Search engine promotion.

Search Engine Promotion is designed to build upon the ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ process by taking your website even further up the Search Engine rankings. Whereas building a ‘Search Engine friendly’ website or ‘optimizing’ your website for the Search Engines are normally one-off tasks, ‘Search Engine Promotion’ is a regular ongoing process.

In December 2006, 6.5 billion searches were carried out in search engines. People are not just looking for information; around 25% of all online purchases originate from search engines. It’s crucial that your site gets the best possible position in the search results for your products. Search engine promotion and search engine optimization is a must if you want to maximise your online presence.

Search engine promotion is known by many different names, search engine optimisation, search engine positioning, online marketing, but all of them are essentially the same thing which is to get websites visibility by making them appear to more users when a person types in a keyword or looks at a directory listing in a search engine or directory. Unlike the yellow pages, search engines don’t order web sites alphabetically, they give you the results in the order they think is the most relevant to your search. So to get to the top: there are lots of small things that need to be done on your web site.

98.8% of internet users report using search engines. The ultimate aim of having your site optimised is to increase traffic. Having your site optimized, means greatly increasing your visibility, your profile and therefore the volume of potential customers visiting your site.

Nowadays Search Engines are basically looking to see if they consider your site to be ‘important’. They also want to be able to ‘understand’ what your site is about. That’s where Search Engine Promotion comes in. It involves London SEO services to optimize a website to increase search engine visibility. By increasing the visibility, and the interpretive importance of a web site according to relevant keywords, the site will more likely to be found by your next prospective customers.

What are Keywords?
In simple terms Keywords are words and phrases that people type into search engines to find products or services that similar to yours. As an example I will use Google, these keywords and phrases are stored in Google’s database and they make an assessment about the webpage and what it is about. Google highlight particular terms and expressions that paint the picture of what your web page is about – ideally these would be your keywords for this page. Then when someone searches in Google on these terms your website shows in the results. In the end how well placed in the search results is as a direct result of many different factors, but I shall not cover many of these in this article, only the actual researching of keywords.

Why do I need keywords?
You may have heard a lot about keywords and how important they are to the Birmingham SEO process well to sum it all up they are the lifeblood of Search Engine Optimisation (Birmingham SEO). Without the right keywords you could alter all of the correct elements (title, description, alt tags, meta tags, H1′s etc etc) on your website but have little or no impact on how your website places in the search engine results pages (SERP’s). It is essential to alter all of the right elements on your website with correct keywords. This is what Birmingham SEO is all about, the marriage between the correct search word terms (keywords) and your web pages.

You might have read some Birmingham SEO references or you may just think that keywords are being over-rated and are not as essential to Birmingham SEO as the experts make them out to be. You may even think that you know all of the words and phrases that people search on to find products or services like the ones that you offer, I can assure you that you do not, and that you do not need to research keywords. Many people try and optimise their websites by making up their own keywords from what they “think” are the right keywords but 99.99% of the time these efforts will fail – how can you know what are the most searched on keywords in the World for a particular topic without some research?

By now you should be getting the idea that Keywords ARE every bit as important as theyve been made out to be, and that bad selection or research on keywords will leave you with an incorrectly search optimised website that may actually cause it to drop in rankings.

How Do I Select Keywords?
Selecting the correct keywords for your website is fairly complicated but I shall break it up into smaller more manageable chunks so as not to confuse you. There is a bit of a process to researching keywords correctly.

We must look at our website as a whole. What is the overall theme of the website? What are our main products or services? How many pages? Then we break up the website into web pages. We optimise a whole website by search optimising all of it’s individual web pages. It is important that we understand the overall theme of the website but look at its individual web page content in more detail so as to optimise for it effectively. Write down the main terms to describe your website and its products or services.

To do the following few tasks I like to have two browser windows and a spreadsheet open. Some of the following websites may require a login, but they are well known and reputable websites.

We should now identify the web page we are going to be optimising keywords for and write down the main terms that are relevant to this web page. If you are just starting out then I suggest you do some of your interior web pages before you do your front page as you get used to the process of optimising this will make your life easier. So choose one of your main product pages to start with.

1. Open “overture inventory” website in your browser window. Using your written notes, type in your product or service and press the submit button. Now copy these results over to the spreadsheet program and label as Overture.

2. Open “WordTracker” in your browser window and using either the free trial account or a normal account, login to the system. Using the WordTracker wizard tool now type in the same product or service you typed in the last step. Highlight and copy over the WordTracker results to the spreadsheet and label as WordTracker.

3. Open “Google Adwords” in your browser window. Login and navigate to tools->keyword tool and then type in the same product/service we entered in the last two steps. Be sure to check the “Use Synonyms” checkbox. Once done copy all of the resulting words over to selected keywords and click on the “estimate search traffic” button. Now copy all of the results to the spreadsheet.

4. Now, looking at the spreadsheet you have generated there should be three collums of information, Overture, WordTracker and Adwords. In this step we want to remove all items that are totally unrelated or irrelevant, so go ahead and delete them.

5. Now, sort the three lists by search volume descending. Looking from the top down on each of the three lists we are going to bold the highest searched on and most relevant phrases. From each of the lists, now copy the bold items to a fourth space in the spreadsheet, these will form our more complete list of the top phrases and keywords.

We have now formed a complete and relevant list of keywords and phrases to use on our individual web page. We should repeat all of the above steps to identify keywords relevant and take note of these.

Using the keywords you have now identified you can now begin the process of integrating these keywords into your web pages and website as a whole. There are many articles out there that detail how and what elements to optimise on your pages. Trying searching in Google for “Introduction to Birmingham SEO Strategies and Techniques” and follow the most basic onpage Birmingham SEO techniques.

The answer is: Yes, you can! The basics of search engine optimisation in applied web marketing are simple. It’s all to do with the keyword content of your text copy, and can be summarised in seven points.

1. Register a good domain name which reflects what your site is about. Even if you are an established business, don’t register www.FredJones.com if you make widgets. Rather, you want to register something like www.BestWidgets.com because that would inspire confidence in people looking for quality widgets who would not necessarily have heard of Fred Jones the widget-maker.

2. Name your page URLs based on reasons similar to the above for your web promotion, except now you can be more specific. Search engines like to know what your page is about. Name a page after a product (BigYellowWidgets.htm) or a service or action (Buy-Widgets-by-Post.htm) on one of the sales pages.

3. The text in the title tag is crucial in letting search engines know what each page is about. Put your important keywords in your title tags, using both the singular and plural versions (people will search for both) and make these tags different and specific for each page. For example, “Widgets and After Sales Widget Services”. Whatever you do, don’t call the home page “Index”, but treat it almost as a mini-description.

4. The other tags (at the top of the html page) between the two “HEAD” tags are not as important as the title tag, but the description tag is still used by some search engines in displaying what you would like web users to see when they scroll down a page of search results. Some search engines don’t use the description tag at all; others, like Google, sometimes use part of it together with part of the main body text surrounding prominent keywords on your page. So you may as well treat the description tag seriously; make it brief (about 25 to 30 words) and as comprehensive as possible in the short space allowed. Make sure you have your popular keywords included within your description tag. The ALT tag is used for a very short description of an image or graphic file, and is what is displayed if you allow your mouse pointer to hover above a graphic. These days it is not considered important for search engines. The COMMENT tag is never displayed on the body page, and is used by coders and designers as an instruction or reminder to themselves about what that section of html coding should be doing; in the past, some webmasters in their quest for website promotion and search engine ranking used to stuff keywords in the comments tags, but now it is generally acknowledged that the main search engines pay little or no attention to these.

5. Keyword density. Each search engine has its own preference as to how many times a keyword phrase appears on the page in order to signify the relevance of that keyword phrase (in other words, in order to help the search engine understand what the page is about). Around 5 to 8 per cent is a rough guide as to the optimal level. Don’t overdo it, otherwise it will be seen as spam or keyword-stuffing. Also use your keywords in the headings tags H1 and H2. There is an H3 tag as well, but it is doubtful whether search engines bother with that, as it is perceived as less prominent on the page, therefore less relevant to what the page is about.

6. Don’t forget good linking in your website marketing. Search engines will judge the importance of your web pages to some extent on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. Ask other webmasters with sites on similar themes to yours for a link, in exchange for a link back. These sites should not be in competition with yours, but should be similarly themed. You may occasionally be asked by other webmasters if they can link to your site. If this is so then have a look at their site; make sure that their site is relevant, that it has at least some Page Rank, and that it just “feels” good, and has no nasty surprises like redirects or unexpected popups. You don’t want to be associated with a “bad neighborhood”!

7. Make sure that important keywords are included in the anchor text within inbound links from other sites. This is crucial to search engines when they try to figure out the relevance and importance of your pages. The inbound link from the other site should take the form of something like this (I’m using normal brackets instead of angle brackets so as not to use compromising html): (A HREF=”http://www.Yoursite.com”) your important keywords included here(/A). You should definitely avoid something like (A HREF=”http://www.Yoursite.com”)click here(/A), which tells search engines nothing except that your site is about “click here”. Be careful!

The doorway page, the satellite page, the channeling page, the information page, the landing page, the entry page, the bridge page…, whatever you call them they’ve long been considered the bete noir of Leeds SEO or search engine optimisation. Everyone’s got their own definition but all of them embrace roughly the same principle, a heavily optimised keyword or keyword phrase-riddled page built solely to attract the search engines that then links back to a main web site.

Some of these will be made up of pure and absolute nonsense bar the top paragraph, that will be proper English with a link back to the main site using the keyword or key phrase as anchor text in the backlink or IBL (Inbound Back Link). The same keyword or phrase will similarly appear in the page’s title tag, the meta description tag and the header or H1 tag, while the rest of the page will be utter gobbledegook, machine-generated Babel spam with the keyword or key phrase sprinkled randomly through the content just to a density which will appeal to the search engines.

Others will be made up entirely of this machine-generated keyword or phrase riddled spam and will automatically redirect through use of javascript or a meta-refresh to a completely different site. Leeds SEO techniques like this, when (not if) discovered will inevitably suffer some kind of search engine penalty if not necessarily an outright ban.

Traditionally it will characteristically also be a page that stands alone outside the main body of a site, existing on it’s own as an individual entity. It will have no incoming (IBL) links from the site; any that it does have will probably be coming from series of similar pages, all created with the same aim in mind, to rank highly in all or a particular engine for a particular specific search term.

If you do a search for doorway page in Google amazingly there are still adverts for companies who openly announce their dubious expertise in this frowned upon Leeds SEO practice despite the very highly-publicised decision by Google to ban BMW for, among other things, their blatant use of this forbidden Leeds SEO technique.

Perhaps a better approach would be to note that now, though, you can legitimately use this basic optimisation technique by making each page into an article and submitting it to an article distribution site. No-one seems to have realised yet, or if they have they haven’t drawn any particular attention to it, that while using doorway pages is still very much a Black Hat Leeds SEO technique, one that can and has been known to get sites banned, you can exercise good White Hat Leeds SEO by creating articles that perform exactly the same Leeds SEO function as a doorway page and no-one will complain or even adversely comment. It seems that, in the eyes of the engines, if you hang the label “article” on a certain kind of doorway page it then becomes perfectly acceptable to all.

For instance, is this article linked to from my site? No it is not. Is this article heavily optimised with keywords related to Leeds SEO and key phrases related to search engine optimisation? Indeed it is. It fulfils, then, at least some of the criteria exponents of so-called “Ethical Leeds SEO” would use to label it as search engine spam, but manifestly, in commenting on the phenomenon it is itself a part of, it isn’t spam at all, more (I believe myself) an example of social commentary on the search engine optimisation or Leeds SEO industry.

So then, is this article itself a doorway page? Like so much in search engine optimisation, that really depends on your own individual point of view. My advice? Look not at what I say I do, look instead at what results from what I do – if I have a high-ranking stand-alone page for popular Leeds SEO keywords with a link back to my main site from it, one that can not be banned for being a doorway page because it is in fact an article that’s about doorway pages, what will the consequences actually be?

Strange, Grasshopper, strange are the ways of the Leeds SEO!