8 SEO do's and don'ts when building your new website

These past two weeks we’ve been updating our website. It’s been a very exciting process, we had a first peak at the new design last week. 

We started with a long list of SEO basics, we’d like to share 8 of them with you here.

These little nuggets of advice are for anyone who owns, wants to own, or is about to own a website, to help you make your website search engine friendly.

1. Don’t use images as buttons in your menu/navigation bar. Always use text in your menu as it will give the search engines an indication of what the pages they’re linking to are all about.
 
2. Don’t use flash and JavaScript. Stay away from flash and JavaScript in menus or anywhere as information presented this way is not easily understandable to search engines. Making use of CSS3 is a better option. This has the advantages of not only being search engine friendly but features build in CSS3 will be compatible with all browsers.
 
3. Do optimise your images. Image optimisation is often overlooked when building websites. Images should be compressed for fast page load times whilst keeping the quality. The naming of images is also important, especially for e-commerce websites with lots of products. Alt tags should be used to present the search engines with something different to read in addition to the image name.

4. Do get your SEO agency involved from the start. SEO considerations should be made at the design stage of a new website so involve your SEO agency right from the start to ensure the design and structure are search engine friendly.
 
5. Do tell Google you’re moving house. If you’re having your website upgraded, redesigned or rebuilt don’t forget to redirect the old pages to the new pages to avoid losing any existing search engine positioning that you may have.
 
6. Do create an html sitemap. Sitemaps help Google easily ‘crawl’ (or read) every page of your website.
 
7. Don’t duplicate content. Google doesn’t like duplicate content so avoid it. This means ensuring that your design company either removes any development version of your website or blocks Google from crawling it. There should never be 2 versions of your website online anywhere.
 
8. Do put the user first. When creating a new website, you must focus on the user experience. This is becoming increasingly more important to Google when deciding where to rank a website in its search engine results. If your bounce rate is high, Google won’t rank your website very high. In addition to creating an engaging user experience you must also build brand trust with your visitors.

If your web people acknowledge these 8 SEO do’s and don’ts it will really help Google to understand what your websites is all about.
 
And that’s exactly what you want.
Because if Google understands the ‘thing’ you’re all about it will position you at the top of its search results for that ‘thing'.

What you need to know about the Google Hummingbird Update

What was the Hummingbird update?

Google recently rewrote the very long and complex code it uses to index the web and provide search results, calling this change the Hummingbird update. 

Hummingbird differs to previous Penguin and Panda Google updates in that it is a complete rewrite. Think of Google Panda and Penguin as new cogs in an old engine – well, Hummingbird is a new engine with some of the old cogs.

Hummingbird is a huge change to the way Google ‘reads’ the internet. Now Google better understands the meaning of words and how certain search phrases are related. 

Google no longer looks for websites with the best matching keywords. Google is looking for websites with the right answers to the meaning behind a search.


Why has there been less up roar about Hummingbird in comparison to Penguin?

You might find it surprising that the Hummingbird update affected 90% of searches, whereas Google Penguin affected only 3% of searches, even though the Penguin Update seemed to have a much larger impact with many websites losing positioning.

This is because the aim of Hummingbird was not to root out poor search results like Penguin and Panda but to enable Google to better read and index the web, in order to provide better answers to more complicated queries.

Websites and SEO companies that have been sticking to Google’s guidelines will have seen no impact on their search result positioning as Google has not changed what they want. They've always wanted to provide searchers with better answers. Hummingbird is just a different method for Google to get these answers. If your website is still providing the answer, your positioning will only get better.


Why was Hummingbird needed?

How people are searching the internet is changing, there is a move towards mobile, spoken searches and longer search phrases.

When Apple first released Siri, its voice search was powered by Yelp and WolframAlpha because Google’s understanding of language was lagging behind. Hummingbird is Google catching up with this area of artificial intelligence, getting computers to understand spoken searches.

Hummingbird will have a marked impact on mobile and spoken searches.

For example, words like ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘why’ indicate the kind of answer a user is looking for therefore understanding of these non-keyword search terms is key.

How does this benefit us?

One of the benefits of the Hummingbird update will be more success for niche websites as users become more and more specific in what they are looking for. People use the internet more and more to look for answers to their questions.

The ball is in our court as SEO companies can use Hummingbird to our advantage. This is because a better understanding of searchers’ intentions, needs and problems enables us to better position websites as the answer. 

6 questions to ask a prospective SEO Company

1. Are people actually searching online for the products/services we offer?

There’s little point in investing in SEO unless you are going to see some sort of return (this can be measured in other ways than simply an increase in sales). Some industries still rely on word of mouth, rather than online search. This should be the first thing an SEO company researches.

2. What results should I expect and in what timeframe?

Asking this question will help you to gage what value can be added to your business by paying for SEO. It will also test that the firm has done their homework into your market and the competition you’re up against.

A good SEO agency should be able to predict an approximate timeframe that it will take to achieve page one positioning for each keyword you’re to be optimised for. And they should also be able to predict the approximate number of visitors your website can expect to achieve as a result of this.

Be wary of SEO agencies who promise valuable number one positioning within weeks. For competitive search terms this isn’t achievable without breaking some of Google’s rules (which, eventually, will get you de-listed or banned altogether).

SEO is a long-term game and every project differs.

3. Do you guarantee results?

SEO has a reputation for being mysterious, a ‘black art’. There’s a simple way to bust this myth: come up with the results! If an SEO company is not confident that they can do this, they shouldn’t embark on a project.

4. How have the recent Google Updates affected the SEO tactics you use?

This is an important question as the online world (Google in particular) is constantly changing. You want an SEO agency who predict and are ready for Google algorithm changes.

5. How will you report progress?

You most likely don’t want to listen to SEO jargon or look at graphs that you don’t understand. All you want to see is your website ranking rising in Google and visitor numbers increasing – can they provide you with that? Ask to see an example report and find out how often you will receive them.

6. Who will be working on my SEO project?

You’ll need a responsive, experienced and specialist team who you can meet-with regularly or call/email whenever. Ask to meet all of your team. Make sure that nothing will be internationally outsourced as this can lead to dodgy SEO practices which could get your website penalised in Google.

Keeping up with industry changes is almost a full time job in itself. So if you’re not going to get SEO from an agency who specialises only in SEO, make sure your team are all dedicated SEO specialists.

Google revamps logo and search page

Yesterday the BBC published a news story about how Google has redesigned and revamped is famous homepage.

Plus a Google spokeswoman said that similar changes would now be "slowly rolled out" across all of its other products (YouTube videos, Android app Play Store etc).


We chatted to Mike Owen, MD of Violet Bick Brand Consultants, who had this to say:

"It’s great that Google are doing this, the key bit of their ‘move’ from a brand perspective is ‘preventing ‘distractions’’.

Google stands for ‘search’ - so they just focus on search. No distractions.

They can run their other brands (YouTube etc.) to deliver on the promises that they make. 

But it’s nice to see the Google search brand, that clearly has the money and awareness to broaden focus if it wants to, narrow its focus.

All great brands know this - and do this.

Google’s search product brand should get even stronger as a consequence."

So well done Google we say!

Is SEO Dead?

One of our clients recently asked us, “Is SEO dead? I’ve been talking to people and reading ‘stuff’ that says it is”… which prompted me to write this post.

To a degree, traditional, old school SEO is dead yes. 

• The days of getting as many links as possible to your website regardless of quality and relevance is dead (this method has never been ‘alive’ in our eyes).

• The days of writing crappy content that no-one would ever read is dead.

• The days of using exact match anchor text in your back links can now get you penalised.

I could go on and on.

Google is moving the goal posts. What used to work doesn’t anymore, and what’s more, what used to work will now get you into trouble.

Google wants to clean up its index. And so it should. Google only wants to display high quality and relevant links in the search results. Google wants its users to find what they’re looking for so they continue to use their search engine (so that Google can continue to make £££’s from AdWords PPC advertising).

SEO isn’t dead.  It's just changing shape.

 

It’s about knowing what Google wants. And Google wants its users to be happy. So there you go… simple… give your audience what they want and Google will be happy.

Here’s one tip on how to do this.

You must create high quality and relevant content – but what does that mean and how do you measure it?

What is good content? 

 

This basically means creating value to keep your audience engaged. Write content (whether it be website content, blog articles, news stories etc.) that your audience will actually spend time reading and will share with their own social network of followers and friends. Be an authority on your subject. Be opinionated. Your content should be compelling.

Good content can be measured by...

• the number of times people link back to your website or blog
• the number of retweets or followers you get on Twitter
• how many people ‘circle’ you in Google+
• how many comments your article or news story gets
• how many people share your content within their own social network (known as word of mouth marketing)

There are many more things to consider of course. You need to know who your audience is so you can give them what they want.

What else should we think of?

It isn’t all about content. Think branding, website design, site usability/ease of use, product/service pricing, authority/respect, USP (unique selling point) and more.

But these are for another post.

Out with the Old and in with the New: Google Keyword Tool becomes Google Keyword Planner

There have been many grumblings in the world of SEO this week as Google replaced the much loved Google Keyword Tool with Google Keyword Planner. 

Google Keyword Tool is (or was) as important for SEO companies as stethoscopes are for doctors.  We used it to analyse an industry’s most valuable keywords – which form the backbone of any SEO project.

So what now? 

Well, we get on with business as normal. 

So here are four things that we like about Google Keyword Planner:

1. You can now target cities and regions.  Previously you could only ‘zoom in’ to see national search volumes (a search volume is how many times a keyword is searched for each month either nationally in the UK or globally worldwide). Now you can ‘zoom in’ to look at searches made within a city. This will help us further fine tune the keywords we target on behalf of clients, especially if they operation regionally.

2. Keyword Planner includes data across all platforms. This includes people making searches from a desktop pc, phones and tablets, rather than just searches made on a computer.

3. Quick access to historical search data. Enabling us to see trends for a search term over the previous twelve months. These trends help give us insights into how people will potentially search for any given keyword in the future.

4. You can now multiply keyword lists. This comes in handy when you have a client offering multiple services across a few different regions, as it allows you to get search data for all of the combinations of up to three lists of keywords.

There are some complaints we could make about the new tool, but that’s always the case with something new because change is uncomfortable for us humans.  

We just figure that we have to get on with it. Google Keyword Tool is gone so we must focus on getting the same deep, granular level, insights into our client’s industries with Google Keyword Planner.

Take Five (For Free)

It's not often you get something for free. 

But then again it's also not often you find an SEO business that has got every single client to page one of Google for loads of really desirable search terms.

Anyhow, here's the free bit. 

This is a gift for anyone that owns a website (or that wants to own one) to give to whomever created their website (or to whomever is about to create it).

Get your web people to acknowledge these things. It'll really help you. It's basic stuff really but it's amazing how often these things get ignored.

1. Don’t build websites in flash and don’t use frames.

2. If you're using WordPress make sure the WordPress version is kept up to date to avoid your website being hacked. A hack can often render your website irreparable. You're left with nothing.

3. Use search engine friendly URLs. For example www.mywebsite.com/about-us, instead of www.mywebsite.com/index2158993288.

4. Choosing a website with a CMS (Content Management System) will allow you do update your website content anytime you want. This will also prevent your web design/development company from charging you for every little content update.

5. Have a blog built into your website (so it lives at www.yourwebsite.com/blog).

Then all you have to do is choose a Search Engine Optimisation business that never fails to deliver on its promises.

And that's angelfysh!