Eustondigital blog

Advice on how to market your website on search engines and with Social media

Archive for February, 2010

Euston Digital – as featured on DailySEOTip.com

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Today Euston Digital gained homepage exposure on the highly respected Search Enginge Optimisation authority Daily SEO Tip.

DailySEOtip

This was thanks to yesterday’s insightful post by SEO Head Charly Wargnier on how to avoid the Robot.txt writers block.

The tip helps SEOs learn from the big sites by using the simple formula “inurl:robots.txt filetype:txt”.

charly wargnier

“I’m really please to be able to help with SEO community with a few tips” said Charly. “Its the first of many… so keep reading.”

If you want need an SEO agency in London to boost your website to the top of Google, Yahoo and Bing then, and want to benefit from the latest SEO tips and tricks from Charly then get in touch.

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How to Avoid the Robot.txt Writer’s block: Get inspired by the big names!

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

google-bot[12]

When doing SEO changes for large scale companies, implementing a proper robot.txt is crucial.

I will not go back to the robot.txt definition bla, bla… millions have done that before us and here at Euston Digital we hate duplicate content… we prefer focusing on stunning link building services! :P

No, instead, just a simple formula to use whenever the geek inside you has a Robot.txt Writer’s block!

So, type “inurl:robots.txt filetype:txt” and, ta-daa! See what the big names are doing.

You will find the robots.txt file from Google, Wikipedia, WebmasterWorld, the White House, Microsoft, W3.org, Facebook, IBM, Amazon, Ebay, New York Times, CNN, YouTube, etc.

Have Geek Fun and stayed tuned for new SEO tips soon.

Charly Wargnier

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Review us on Bing

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

You might wonder why this blog post has the title ‘Review us on Bing‘. What exactly does that mean? And why have we created it?

Review us on Bing

Review us on Bing

The answer might lie in how you found this post.

Just this morning an article was posted on SmallBusinessSEM that shows that there are just 3 results on Google for the search term ‘review us on Bing’. So we reacted to that and posted this article, because we knew that SEO pros and business owners like you might then test out the theory that there are just 3 results of the search ‘Review us on Bing’.

This shows you how Euston Digital is an SEO agency that can react quickly and exploit short term opportunities to grab traffic for our clients.

If you want to know how Euston Digital can deliver sharp, effective and rapid tatics for your SEO program, then get in touch.

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Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »

10 tips to help you get the most out of your link building

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Link building has long been a cornerstone of Search Engine Optimisation. It’s one of the main ways that you can build the value of your website in the eyes of Google. Search Engines need links in order to find your website; and they need links to work out how important your website is. Links can give your website ‘authority’, a key goal of SEO.

Since you have to do link building, here are my top 10 things to remember when carrying out your link building.

2 amazing free tools for link assessment.

Let’s start with 2 free tools to assess the value of a domain/or page:

The old but always amazing SEO Book Toolbar for Firefox

The Brand new Open site explorer from SEOMoz -don’t forget to create a free account to extend the access!

1. Choose quality over Quantity

It’s not about the sheer volume of links to your website. It’s about where those links are coming from. A few high value links will push your site higher than many low value one.

But how do you work out what is a ‘high value’ link and what isn’t?

2. Assess the number of outbound links of the link-giving website/page.

Outbound links are links that direct the Internet user to another website.

If the website giving you an inbound link has many (20+) outbound links, the authority that it passes to you will be lower than if it just has a few.

If the website giving you an inbound link has many inbound links itself, the authority that it passes to you will be higher than if it just has a few.

Remember this equation for the Link Giving website:

Lots of inbound links + few outbound links = Great website to get a link from!

Also, as mentioned in the “Design and content” guidelines section from Google, the “100 outbound links maximum” recommendation is also a good one to follow.

Zillions of free tools exist to assess number of OBL but SearchStatus for Firefox is our tool as it can do many other things!

3. Make sure you are using targeted anchor text

Your inbound links must built using keywords that you want to rank highly for. These links can then tell Google not only how important your website is, but what keywords it should rank you for. Make sure you vary your anchor text however, otherwise Google will be suspicious. Use three different keyword phrases, and occasionally your website name too. Image links need to have anchor text in the ALT tag of the image.

4. What is the link-giving website all about?

The best websites to get inbound links from are those that are an authority in your particular market. If you sell glasses, then you want inbound links from editorial websites that write all about glasses, lenses, vision etc. High value links come from websites and pages that are relevant to your website. Also, we have to stress that point 3 and 4 are linked: ignoring the anchor text when evaluating the topicality of the on-page content would be just plain stupid.

5. Have a look at PageRank or better, MozRank but take them with a Pinch of salt!

PageRank is the ‘value’ Google used to place on a page. Although pretty Obsolete as a “precise” metric, it gives a broad idea of a page authority.

You can see the PageRank of each page by looking at the green PR bar on the Google toolbar. Whilst it’s not the be all and end all, and whilst the bar is often out of date, it is at least a measure of the ‘importance’ of that web page in the eyes of Google.

That said, we would advise not to use PageRank. The main problem is that it could up to 9 months for the PR data to be updated. A site could i.e have suffered from a penalty from Google in the meantime.

Mozrank would be a better option as they use roughly the same information but updates it more frequently.

Mozrank can be tracked w/ many tools including SearchStatus (see it does many things!)

6. Where on the page is your Link located

Links coming to your website are best when high up the page or buried within editorial. Links from footers or sections called ’sponsors’ or ‘partners’ are of much lower value.

7. Link-giving website domain

Links from websites with some domain name extensions are worth more than others. Google values most highly links from .com, .co.uk (in the UK), .edu and .gov.uk (in the UK) domains. Others are worth less (but not worthless!)

8. Don’t ignore links from Social Network websites

Although most of the links on social media Networks (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon etc…) are no followed (due to shortened URL which are redirects), People have to think about the SEO authority that will come from editorially given links resulting from the social media exposure.

Also it seems that these ‘active web’ links are becoming taken into account to a great extent by Google, so bear them in mind.

9. Don’t ignore forums or blogs

Take some time to participate in and build links from relevant forums and blogs. Make sure they ARE relevant though – that’s the key. Aside from bringing some SEO value these links might actually be followed by genuine users.

I couldn’t stress enough on the fact that links on forums (if not no followed) carry little SEO value. They would hence be a relevant strategy only if they bring quality traffic to a site –which is generally the case when you gives good advice… on time! ;)

10. Make sure your inbound links are ‘followed’.

Website owners can add some code to their links that instructs the search engines to effectively ignore them. Check the source code of the link giving website. Find your link and check that it does than have the value rel=”nofollow”.

Okay… that’s a bit Old School! Here are 2 handy tools to save you a lot of times by automatically highlighting the “no follow” attribute:

And that’s it!

Link building is an important way to build the authority of your website, and tell Google what your website is all about. But it can be time consuming too! Follow these basic guidelines to make sure you build links in the most effective and efficient way. If you want Euston Digital help with your link building campaign then get in touch.

Charly Wargnier

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Posted in Link Building | 1 Comment »

How to Make the Most of Valentine’s day

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

For those of you who need reminding Valentines is now only 6 days away. Why would you need reminding? You see it everywhere. Shop windows, web pages, email reminders, it’s everywhere!

Plan your Valentines Day content

Many of you will be planning Valentines related content  or offers on your sites over the next couple of days. But it doesn’t stop there. 16th of Feb is Pancake Day, 14th of March is Mothers Day, 17th March St Patricks Day, 2nd April Easter starts.

Make the most of the Event

The question we’d like to ask is does all this ‘event’ related brand association increase conversions on your website? Of course, there will be a different answer for every product on every site.  Will the content reduce your bounce, or are many of your customers so un enthralled they’ll click away immediately? Does the themed content carry a product offer with it? Is it the offer that increases conversion rates or the theme.

Test different Messages and Landing Pages

Euston Digital can help you find the answers to these questions. If you’re planning new content themes for and future event, or just wanting to test a new layout, we can A/B test the traffic we send through and monitor conversion rates to give you the insight as to whether it’s good for conversions or not?

For a one off fee of £200 you can get information which would enable you to optimise all your future themed campaigns.

Don’t waste your time and money

Don’t waste time, labour costs and marketing budgets on campaigns that don’t improve conversion rates. Euston Digital can help you focus your spend on the marketing that delivers results.

Valentines day

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Posted in Conversion Optimisation | No Comments »

ReMarketing on the Google Content Network with Euston Digital

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Euston Digital are excited to be taking part in the Google AdWords Remarketing BETA.

What is Remarketing?

Lets say someone visits your travel website looking for a hotel:

Remarketing 1

They look at a few hotels, and then leave your website.

Later on that day they’re browsing a website that is part of the Google Content Network. With Remarketing, we can reach out to that person and show them an advert for your website:

Remarketing 2

The user will be reminded that they were on your website, and decides to return and buy.

Why remarket?

Remarketing has been credited with a real boost to conversion rates. Only 5%-10% of people visiting your website end up buying from you. ‘Remarketing’ targets those people who leave without buying, and nudges them back to your site. They’re already familiar with your brand, and are therefore more likely to convert.

Network Performance

Compared against other Advertising Networks, a Remarketing network outperforms in almost every case.

Campaign Results

Early results indicate that click through rates and conversion rates make these campaigns amoungst the best performing.

Scale

The Google Content network is huge. Make it work in a small way and it will really scale.

How does Remarketing work technically?

We work with Google to produce javascript tags. You will need to place these on your website, on your sign up process, and on your confirmation page.

This javascript sets a user cookie that tells Google whether:

*They’ve visited your website

*They’ve entered the sign up process

*They’ve bought something from you

We can then target those users according to which of these situations apply to them.

For example, for those users who have entered the sign up process but then left, we might want to reach them with an advert that gives them that product at a discount.

For those users who have bought something from you, we might want to reach them with an advert for a complimentary product.

Here’s  a good visual:

Remarketing 3

For more information about how Euston Digital can use Remarketing to boost your sales, get in touch.

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Posted in Conversion Optimisation, PPC | No Comments »