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Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

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.

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”.

“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.

Tags: seo tip
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

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?

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.

Tags: review
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

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:

• For Firefox: Guess what? SearchStatus… again!
• For Google Chrome META SEO inspector: http://goo.gl/ju9U
• For IE: uhm…sorry?

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

Tags: google, Link Building, pagerank, SEO
Posted in Link Building | No Comments »

How to use LinkedIn to market your business

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Social Media Marketing is the new media buzzphrase of the moment. The Internet is starting to burst with opinions and ideas of how to use social media to market your business.

We’ve not been afraid of that either, with our basic guide on how to use Twitter.

However, when people talk about social media they’re usually referring to Facebook, Twitter and sometimes MySpace.

The social network that is often overlooked is LinkedIn.

The traditional approach to LinkedIn is to use it to promote your own personal business interests and connections, often as a career tool. But the power of this business focused social network can be bring leads, sales & revenue too.

LinkedIn is a bit different

Whilst other social networks are good at reaching focused demographics, interest groups or the mass market, LinkedIn is a place to find specific individuals. For this reason, it makes more sense for sales of low volume high value products where decision makers are harder to find.

Using your employees’ contacts

LinkedIn is all about individual people reaching out to other specific individuals,. As a starting point, you need to utilize your and your employees network contacts, From there, you need to move onto people that they’re connected to (2nd degree contacts). And so the process will continue.

But don’t be Spammy

Every time you reach out using LinkedIn will will show your real, professional, and company name. Therefore its important not to turn off those contacts – or in other words, don’t be spammy. Every move you make, every contact you reach will be visitible to your networks, so bear that in mind so as not to appear over zealous.

How to get going

1. Find an ‘open networker’

An open networker is someone who has linked to as many people as they possibly can. They have messaged everyone in their network, and every new contact, to expand their contact list as much as possible.

To find an Open Networker (or LION – LinkedIn Open Networker), search on LinkedIn for ‘LION’. When you find one, invite them to your network. If they accept, you then have access to their 1st degree and 2nd degree contacts. Sometimes LIONs include their email address in their LinkedIn profile name, making it all the easier to invite them to your network, even though you’re not  connected to them at all.

You can also find open networks on TopLinked.com.

2. LinkedIn Answers

Anyone can ask a question on LinkedIn Answers. Anyone can answer. It allows you to interact with people who are not in your network, which of course helps to make new contacts.

If you ask a question many people can answer you. Once the question closes (after a few days or whenever you decide), you choose the ‘good’ answers. Of these “good” answers you then choose a ‘best’ answer.

The person who gave that answer gets an ‘expertise point’ that shows in their LinkedIn profile.

You could therefore use LinkedIn Answers to display your expertise.

In addition, people sometimes ask “where can I get a…” types of questions, often with regard to specific services. If you have a product or service that fits, you can answer these questions with a link to your website.

Sometimes it might be that you can offer a small answer, and then say ‘for more info’ or ‘for my full answer see…’ and then link to your blog, where you can answer the question in full.

3. Get recommended in ‘Services’

Another method is to get as many people in your 1st and 2nd degree networks to recommend you for a particular service. Some users will scour services to find a supplier. The more times you’ve been recommended, the greater the ‘reach’ of those recommendations. And the more positive your business looks.

4. Find ‘buyers’ in a organisation

Since every profile in a business includes a job title, its much easier to reach out to a specific person in order to try and sell to them. Most people will be connected to others in their organisation, so if your first degree contact is someone in a business you’re trying to target, the chances are that you can use their contacts to find the right individual..

5. Building Links

LinkedIn used to offer ‘followed’ links, which were an important method of link building as part of your Search Engine Optimisation program.

These days however, these links are either ‘no followed’ or redirected. Nevertheless, they can be an important source of referral traffic to your website. Links still get clicked on after all.

Make sure all employees have links to your website in their profile. Make sure the links are visible and can be crawled by the search engines by making all profiles include the “show website” feature. You can do this in “Edit My Public Profile“. Click “Full View” and also “Websites”.

That’s it

Often overlooked as a source of new business, LinkedIn is a powerful tool to reach specific buyers in organisations. Make the most of your network contacts using the techniques above.

If you want Euston Digital to help you with your Social Media marketing then get in touch. Any comments please leave them below.

Tags: Link Building, linkedin, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Link Building, Social Media | No Comments »

5 Tips to Boost your Directory Submission Workflow with a Simple Google Account!

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Here’s the 1st blog post of series that will hopefully help you in your daily task of Directory Submissions and managing them VERY FAST!

As an SEO Manager, I’ve seen many SEO’s pretending to do fast and efficient Directory Submissions.

While many do an excellent job, some use automatic submission tools, resulting in significant drops in rankings.

Others like myself go the long way round and submit manually. This is a time consuming, so its all important to do in fastest way possible!

I think it would be relevant to share a few tips on how to submit to directories Fast AND in a 100% White Hat way.

Let’s start with something straighforward: managing your Link Building Campaign with a simple Google Account. I will give you 5 Tips that you can apply straight away & are meant to be a time saver for any Seo Manager who does directory submission on a daily basis on a regular.

Ready? Here we go!

1. Submitting easily with Google Toolbar Auto-fill

Autofill is an essential tool in any directory submission process. The one integrated in the Google Toolbar is pretty straighforward and will autofill any basic info like the company name, email address and  address.

Once you’ve installed the Google Toolbar, here’s what the auto-fill button looks like:  

The Google Toolbar has 2 important drawbacks though:

1. 1 set of data per Google account, that is per toolbar. In other words it’s impossible to manage several accounts/clients without logging out and logging in again.
2. the data auto-fillable is static: that means it doesn’t work with selections, checkboxes, radio buttons and any valid form fields and you cannot choose which field you would like to autofill.

To do all that, you will another tool, but that will be another post!

2. Creating Filters in Gmail to easily redirect each email to its appropriate folder

If you do dozens of directory submissions for dozens of clients, you easily end up after just a few months with thousand of emails to manage. Between confirmation emails,  emails related to articles that need to be edited because they don’t fit into the directory editorial guidelines & listings that need to be relisted as they have been rejected, we, as Seo Managers, needs to keep track of everything fast… and for that you have to have a reliable and friendly email client.

Here at Euston Digital, we’ve been using Gmail for years and we can easily say it’s by far the best email client. You can sign up for a free account here.

With the last months improvements, playing with filters has never been so much fun!

So what can you do with the filters?

3. Take Advantage of the Import/Export Filters Function & apply your settings to all your Google accounts

Once you’re happy with a set of filters, here’s where Gmail makes the difference: you can easily apply the same set of filters to all of your clients, that is all of your Gmail accouts!

Here’s how:

Step 1: enabling the Filter import/export function.

This is still a Gmail Labs function so you will have to go to lab (upper right of you screen, as pictured here: 

then do a Ctrl+F for the term “Filter import/export” and click on “enable”.

Step 2: Once that’s done, you will have 2 new buttons in your filter section, as shown below. The rest should be self explanatory, drop us a line if it’s not!

4. Articles Management made easy Using Google Docs

Nowadays, Article Directories is still considered as a relevant way of obtaining quality backlinks to any website. However, managing  articles for dozens of clients can be one of the most time consuming task in Link Building. To Help you be faster Google Docs is here! Many benefits from it, let’s expose 3 great functions here:

1. 1st Pro, no need to search each article on your computer or anywhere else anymore. Each article will now be at one click of a button! Indeed you can access Google Docs direcly from Gmail, upper right of the screen. There, all the articles related to the appropriate Google Account/Client will be listed and stored as long as needed.
2. Another great benefit from Google Docs: you can invite any of your clients to view the possible changes you’ve made. Once invited, they’ll be able to review the changes and edit them on the fly, without even signing in to any Google account! 
3. And last but not least, with the new Bulk Upload Function launched a few days ago, you can easily upload on Google Docs all the articles your clients are likely to send you in a Word format at once! Files can be uploaded to Google Docs either by enabling a right-click menu item or through drag-and-drop functionality… another great time saver!
   

5. Managing Multipe Gmail Accounts at one click of a button

A final tip useful when Deadlines have to be met and it’s just a hassle to switch from one account to another:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1320

Once Installed, you  will quickly realize this is a fantastic Plugin for directory submissions! A simple right click at the bottom right of your browser will display the following pop up:

As you can see, it’s now easy to visualize which one of your client account has messages, and, even better, a simple click will direct you to any Google account of your choice. Everything’s working fast and smooth!

Conclusion

At Euston Digital, we all hope this blog post – my very first post actually! – will help you optimise your work flow while managing your link building campaigns. Feel free to drop any comments about what you think about this article as well as sharing some tools that could help SEO’s to be even faster and have more time to…. say… do more PPC?

Charly Wargnier

Tags: Directory Submissions, Link Building, SEO
Posted in Link Building, SEO, Search Engines | 9 Comments »

How much do you think your brand is worth?

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Last week the Millward Brown Optimor’s BrandZ Top 100 list was published. This is a list of the world’s biggest brands, and their associated ‘value’.

This year the list is topped for the third year running by Google, whose brand worth has gone up a whopping 16% over the last 12 months. This means that it is now ‘worth’ $100 billion.

Here’s the top 10:

As to how this value is calculated, Millward Brown Optimor (MBO) say that it is the sum of all future earnings that brand is forecast to generate, discounted to what that value is today. Some have suggested that a brand’s ‘value’ is arbitrary; for MBO, it’s all about a brand’s ability to ‘generate demand’.

One reason that Google’s brand may be so much higher than its fellow technology companies is that it always calls its products ‘Google’. This contrasts with Microsoft who run many secondary brands such as Hotmail, Windows, and Bing.

Microsoft attracts the second highest valuation, at $76.2bn (up 8 % on last year).

Others in the top 10 include Coca-Cola, IBM, McDonald’s, Apple, China Mobile, General Electric, Vodafone and Marlboro.

The two fastest growing brands were Amazon (up 85 % to $21bn) and Blackberry (up 100% to $16bn).

Despite the economic downturn, the total value of the most valuable brands rose by 2 % to just less than $2 trillion.

So what does ‘brand’ mean?

The word ‘brand’ means many different things to different people. For me, it’s what thoughts and associations people have when they think of your company. Do they think ‘good service, nice people’; or do they think ‘cheap products, fast delivery’. Do these thoughts and associations mean that people will pre-decide to buy from you before buying from your competitor? Apart from your products, ‘brand’ is what your website visitors and customers take away with them, in their minds, having visited your website or bought your products.

So how do you improve your brand’s value?

There are two ways to do this. The first is to make you customers and website visitors have as positive an experience as possible with you, your website, and your products. That might be by having a rich, well designed site; it might be by giving them easy to find information, great service, and a good feeling from their interaction with your website and your business.

The second way is to expose this ‘experience’ to as many people as you can.

The obvious way to expose this experience to more people is for us to carry out a Search Engine Optimisation program to boost your website up the Search Engine Results page. Your should also kick off your Social Networking strategy start building a community around your website. It’s this community who will recommend your site to others, and ultimately build a loyal base of frequent visitors.

Do any of you have a brand that you think is of value? What value do you think it has? Have you got any brand building tips you could leave for us here? Leave us a comment below.

Tags: brands, google, SEO
Posted in SEO, Search Engines | 3 Comments »