SEO

Website, Blog, News…..why all 3?

Paul TagentLeave a comment

A great deal has been written about the merits of creating quality “inbound” links with regards to boosting a websites performance within search engines and I wanted to clarify how I position 3 possible activities within your marketing to facilitate this.

We all know about websites, but what is a website for? In my opinion, a website is your 24/7 shop window and as such, it should contain the factual information about you and your business. i.e. what your business is called, what is does, who is involved in the business + their background, the benefits your business brings, the costs, where to find you etc etc. This information is very likely to change periodically so having some sort of content management system within your website that allows you to make these changes is a facility I would very much advocate. Not only does this facility mean that you can time proof your website, the activity within the pages (i.e. the changes you make) will get noticed by search engines and, as such, will benefit you.

My final word on a website is DON’T scrimp on yours. Take pride in it and invest time (and money) to get something that you are proud of. After all, you might “know someone who knows IT” like a friend of a friend or your son, but would you trust this person with your company?! No.

“What about a Blog? Do I need one??”…are 2 questions I regularly get?!” I have actually written a post answering these a while back. See http://www.themarketingexpert.net/2010/01/what-is-blog-and-why-do-i-need-one.html but the content of your Blog should contain a more light hearted tone than your website. i.e It doesn’t have to be factual or contain lots of information about you or your business. In fact, it doesn’t have to be used to “sell” you or your company and, as such, I actually see a Blog as a way of demonstrating ones credibility within a sector and even a way of opening a discussion with readers. A Blog must therefore be, interesting to read and short enough to get your message across. In addition, a Blog will allow the Blog owner to create “links” to wherever they want…..such as your website i.e create quality inbound links Do this by hyperlinking certain key phrases within the copy and/or by linking images.

And finally, my suggestion is to have some sort of “news” section within your website. “Do I really need a website, a Blog AND news???”

The answer in my opinion is yes.
A news section allows the site owner to keep customers and prospects up to date with what they are up to. Yes, a news section may also well mean competitiors can see what your up to, but so what? I am personally proud of being busy and having news within your website allows continual updating (which Google and its friends can see) and it also means that you can keep people informed.

These 3 elements, if used properly, can make a big difference to your marketing and how customers and prospects “see” you and your business. Remember the world wide web is exactly that, “world wide” and means anyone can see what you write and do so use it properly!

If you need any additional advice about online marketing, please get in touch with me via my website………………………………..and feel free to see my news and blog at the same time!!

Want a bigger slice of the SEM pie?

Paul TagentLeave a comment
Big Slice?

It’s not just about driving traffic and conversions. In my opinion, a secondary objective for a large amount of search marketing activity (SEM) should be dedicated to brand awareness and reputation management, yet the results of a study conducted by a company called Epiphany in Leeds show that a lot of well-recognised brands are failing to have a regular presence online leaving space for their competitors.

The study demonstrated that a number of the ‘SuperBrands’ are relying far too much on brand-led terms in search. Epiphany’s Director of Search, Andy Heaps:
“It’s not necessarily that big brands are complacent when it comes to search – it’s more that the potential of search isn’t always understood, so isn’t seen as a priority. Brands are also often blinkered by the comfort that comes from brand traffic they receive.”
In addition, the larger the market, the more competitive the search activity so why not use a slightly different approach?
A very good example of how Bath Marketing Consultancy applies this theory is with our client BLB Solicitors.
BLB have a dedicated Personal Injury website – www.personalinjurysolutions.co.uk. CPC for the term ‘personal injury solicitor’ can be as much as £95per click making it very hard to compete on a national basis. Even regional variations are upwards of £50per click in some areas. Therefore, Bath Marketing looked at organically optimising the website for the regions it has offices in and then targeting specific case studies.
For example, if you had experienced some sort of severe accident that left you in some discomfort. After consulting your GP, there is a good chance that you would be diagnosed with CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome). If you then thought about making a claim against the perpetrator or looking for a definition using CRPS Claim as a search term, BLB’s PI website is very likely to be the site that you find organically, via the online Dictionary, on forums etc.
Why not put this to the test by inputting crps claim into Google?

In a crowded market full of very similar competing companies & products, any advantage, regardless of how slight can make a significant difference to sales and essentially, the difference between the market-leader and second place.
If you want to increase your slice of the pie in your market, why not get in touch with Bath Marketing Consultancy?

5 Top Tips to help SEO

Paul Tagent5 Comments

Below are the 5 main areas Bath Marketing Consultancy think you should look for when building a website which effectively can prevent a site from getting proper rankings:


 • Lack of content on the homepage. There are some very big companies who believe that they can get decent search engine rankings without adding readable text to the sites homepage. This is a huge mistake. 

• Having a site Designed Entirely in Flash. Adobe has made a lot of great strides in making its files readable, and should be commended for it. However, text in Flash files gets embedded into images, which aren’t read by the search engines. In many cases, the search engine sees a big blank spot when Flash is presented, so it can’t judge how relevant a site is.  


• No hierarchy. For very large sites, the lack of a clear hierarchy presents a problem. The distribution of pages on a website should look like an organizational chart for a major corporation. The homepage would be the CEO, the category pages would be the directors, and so on. A lot of sites present a very wide and shallow profile, so the search engine can’t distinguish between an important category page and an ancillary product page. Hierarchies can be created using breadcrumbs, good directory structures, and HTML sitemaps, and are always recommended for sites with hundreds or thousands of pages. A Bad URL Structure can also keep pages from getting found which makes your pyramid look a lot smaller in the search world.
 • Same Title on Every Page. Many enterprise level corporations are obsessed with branding, and want to be sure the same message appears on every title. A search engine can’t figure out the topic of each page if all the titles are the same, and the information at the left of the title is the most important. If your company name (xyz.com) starts every page title, you are robbing your site of a higher natural search engine position. 


 • Set It And Forget It Mentality. Part of keeping a site relevant involves making sure the site is updated frequently in order to stay fresh and account for search engine algorithm changes. In the corporate world, inertia can set in, so outdated information may be left on the site for years, and changes to the website may happen infrequently or as part of an initiative where all the pages are updated at the same time. After awhile, search engines visit less frequently, and competitors who keep fresh websites get priority in the search engine rankings.

There are quite a few other mistakes made when it comes to building websites and most of those mistakes are made in the small business sector. However, search engines have gotten very good at spotting many common mistakes, and can usually figure out the relationship between pages on smaller sites. Larger sites, however, may be compounding their design mistakes and may be fractionalizing the value that search engines apply to each of that sites pages. 


 Sometimes a cheap looking site with minimal SEO work can be more effective in search engines that an expensive, well-known branded site.

Drop me an email and I will take a look at your site.

Why doesn’t my site appear organically on Google??!

Paul TagentLeave a comment

A recent article I saw on Article Maker that pretty much sums up the 5 basic steps to getting your website in the best condition to be found on Google and other search engines. There is no single initiative that will tick all the SEO boxes and don’t be fooled by anyone selling inbound links to your site from someone in India posting your domain name onto link building sites!

If you want the 5 ways look at relevant content, keyword optimisation, link popularity, link quality and article publishing.

Bath Marketing suggests that you work with your web designer and marketing people to lay the foundations for a conclusive online strategy.