Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

How to boost your GEO located SEM strategy

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

What is a geo located SEM campaign?

A local geo-targeted campaign is an essential part of any marketing strategy for small to medium sized businesses. In particular, to have in place a correct GEO located SEO and PPC campaign is a great way of driving quality traffic to local websites.

A geo-targeted search marketing campaign is based on optimizing location long tail keywords in order to increase local leads and conversion rate.

To take advantage of the recent growth of geo located social websites like Foursquare and Gowalla, any web-savvy local business owners should start getting into social media marketing by launching its own geo targeted social campaign.

There are some interesting tools out there that help you get started with geo targeted social marketing.

Geo-targeted campaign tool

For example, GEOtoko is a nice platform that allows you to create your own geo targeted campaigns in a minute.

You can create location-based contests and sweepstakes to reward customers for checking in using Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Yelp and so on. You can also post your updates directly in Facebook.

Once you have created your campaign, it is crucial to promote it on a daily basis through your social networking profiles as a constant reminder of the on-going contest to your potential customers.

Our first location based campaign

Here at Euston Digital we have recently launched our first location based campaign with GEOtoko, an interesting contest based on the tweets and checks-in that we receive daily.

For every tweet and check-in with Foursquare and Gowalla, from August 10 to August 17 we have been giving away a free website audit .

We think that geo-targeting marketing is a great addition to the overall SEM strategy of small to medium sized businesses, so keep your eyes on our blog for the latest tips on how to best strengthen your local popularity.

Start your own geo targeted campaign today for your chance to win more local leads!

Tags: geo marketing, local SEO, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Mobile, SEO, Social Media | No Comments »

What is worth more – an organic or paid click?

Monday, July 19th, 2010

As any marketer knows, search engines can bring your website traffic from two separate areas of the search engine results page (SERPs).

The red section is the paid-for listings (PPC). The green is for the organic listings (SEO). Euston Digital can help with both your PPC and SEO.

The question is: which side brings the most valuable traffic?

The short answer is: it depends. It varies from site to site, and the only way to really work it out is by analysing your conversion rate and ROI using your web analytics.

And the long answer? What about ‘on average’? Well according to an economic study published recently by Google, it’s the paid for – or sponsored listings – that bring the most valuable traffic. Google go as far to say that organic clicks are worth just 70% of their paid-for counterparts.

Why are paid-for listings worth more?

Google don’t say why they make that call, so here are a few ideas of our own.

1. People who click on the adverts have a specific intent. They know what they want, and are prepared to cost a business money in order to get it. They consider that a fair exchange, and are prepared to enter a transactional relationship.

2. There’s fewer paid-for listings that organic listings. For each search term there are probably just a few thousand competing advertisers, but 100s of thousands of websites competing for the organic listings. So a click on the paid for listing is takes a great share of the overall opportunity.

3. The only advertising that sticks around is the stuff that’s working. By and large, business won’t poor money into advertising that doesn’t work, and would sooner turn it off. By contrast, a website might continue to rank highly in the organic listings even though it no longer sells a product. Therefore the paid clicks are more likely to be accurate and result in good value for both users and website owner.

4.Adverts are human edited and controlled more closely. Not only are they written, and placed on a keyword by keyword basis, they also pass a ‘quality score’ judgement by the AdWords system. Therefore they are more likely to represent the best place for that user to arrive. By contrast, the organic listings are Google’s best guess at the user’s intention.

5. Adverts are deep linked to the most appropriate page on the website. By contrast, organic listings often send traffic to the home or category page, or make poor judgement due bad signals as to the best landing page.

Which side of the page brings you the most traffic? How does it vary in quality? Leave us a comment below.

Tags: organic traffic, PPC, SEO
Posted in PPC, SEO | No Comments »

SEO News Round Up

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Here’s the latest news and developments in the world of SEO to help you keep up to date.

LINK BUILDING

In this article there are some fantastic tips and ideas about how to get links in tough industries.

LOCAL

How can you improve your ranking in Google Places? In this article you will find some great tips for optimising your listing and rankings in Google places.

The latest changes in Google Places OneBox – now if you click on the OneBox result, it does not take you to the business’s website but to the Google Place Page for that website (and the “More Info” link has been renamed “Place Page”).

SEO GENERAL

The biggest SEO Dont’s as suggested by SEOmoz

And the biggest SEO Dont’s for small businesses as suggested by Searchengineland

Does Google pay attention to the presence of a keyword in the URL? Apparently so … and so do Yahoo and Bing, take a look at this interesting test!

Starting from August/September 2010, Yahoo! and Bing organic search results will merge … We will keep on monitoring them head-to-head, so stay tuned!

Need a laugh? Well this guy tried to boost his website rankings by using the word “page rank” in the meta tags.

SEO EDUCATIONAL

If you want to find out more about SEO and even become an expert in this subject, we recommend this fantastic list of SEO resources.

That’s it!

Any of your own to add? Please leave ‘em below!

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

Have you tried Google Ad News?

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

I arrived back from holiday last week to be greeted by over 1,000 emails. That doesn’t mean that I’ve got 1,000 things to do – my work has been well covered whilst I was away.

Most of these emails are newsletters, Google alerts and updates from the Advertising industry in general, and the specific markets I focus on.

Aside from this, I’ve got about a g’zillion tweets to read, Google reader updates, and all the essential stuff I feed to my iGoogle page.

It’s a tough task to keep on top of it all, but it’s also part of what you need to do to keep abreast of the latest developments in Advertising generally, and online, search and social media specifically. The problem is that most of that stuff isn’t completely new: there are a few innovations here and there, but most is just repetitious regurgitation of a few unique items.

So I’m interested to see that Google have now added a Google Ad News site, powered by Google News. You can subscribe to the specific area you’re interested in, be that search, display or mobile. You can even get news specific to your news or brand.

This makes it easy to identify what is genuinely new, and what can be ignored.

I’m going to be using it to cut some chaff but retain the wheat… something that feels sorely needed right now. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Tags: advertising, PPC, SEO
Posted in And Finally | No Comments »

What are the best link building tools?

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) falls into two basic categories.

1. Onsite SEO – These are changes that need to be made to a website, either  to the code, the text or the images.

2. Link Building – This is the generation of inbound links to a website

Both tasks involve a lot of thought. Both tasks require access to great tools. But when it comes to link building, it’s the tools that can often be the difference that makes the difference.

Here’s a problem: there are more ‘link building tools’ out there than you can shake a stick at.  In order to find the best ones to use, you need to work out what you want them to do. There are the range of tasks they can carry out.

Link tools can tell you:

*how many inbound links you have;

*the pages on your website they link to;

*where those links come from;

*the type of links they are;

*any anchor text used in those links

*the ’strength’ of those links – how much ‘juice’ they are passing to you

Link tools can help you research:

*pages that include your brand name but don’t link to you – low hanging fruit when it comes to link building

*Powerful pages that you should target for link acquisition

*Pages that include the right context for link acquisition

*links used by your competitors that you may wish to target

Link tools can help you:

*record your link building activity

*monitor your links and check their strength and continued existence

*report the effects of link building program to stake holders

So as a company that does great link building, what tools do we use? Here are a few of my favourites:

Basics

http://wholinkstome.com/

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysite

http://www.analyzebacklinks.com/

Advanced

http://www.backlinkwatch.com/

http://www.linkdiagnosis.com/

http://www.advancedlinkmanager.com/">Advanced

http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape

http://www.majesticseo.com/

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/

My Choice

Without a doubt, my favourite link building tool is http://raven-seo-tools.com/. This does the lot. It analysis, reports, researches, monitors, and can also pull in data from your Google Analytics too.

What do you think?

Have I missed any great link building tools? Leave us a comment below.

Tags: Link Building, link building tool, search engine optimisation, SEO
Posted in Link Building, SEO | 1 Comment »

Google Tweaks the SERPs by introducing Brand Suggestions

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

In the last couple of weeks, Google has quietly slipped out a couple of modifications to their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). One of these is ‘Brand Suggestions’.

Brand suggestions

For some product searches, Google has started introducing suggestions about which brand of the product you might like to search for next, in a single line above the rest of the results

For example, if you’re looking for a digital camera, Google gives you these suggestions at the top of the results page:

Google say that these suggestions are designed to help those who are researching which product to buy. They are based on brand searches that other people have moved on to.

What does this mean for your SEO and SEM strategy?

To start with, its going to boost the number of secondary searches for big brands.   Big brands by their very nature will be better known, and therefore more frequently searched for. This will push even more people to search for them.

If you run a PPC campaign for a big brand, then you need to make sure you are appearing in top position for all your brand + generic searches, since theses are the ones that are going to be boosted.

If you’re a retailer then your SEO strategy should include building brand pages on your site. These will give you a better chance to grab some of that brand + generic traffic. Be sure to build targeted links to these pages within your site that include the brand name

If you’re a smaller brand, then it might be a good time to start bidding on competitor brand names + generic keywords; and building product comparison tables on your website. This will give you a chance of getting other brand’s traffic onto your website, and then converting it once there.

Tags: brand suggest, PPC, SEO
Posted in PPC, SEO, Search Engines | 2 Comments »

Rap your way to Number 1 on Google AdWords

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

This is a serious blog. On an important subject. Search Marketing. PPC. SEO. CRO. AdWords.

Serious. Honest.

Tags: PPC, rap, SEO
Posted in And Finally, PPC, SEO | No Comments »

SEO Manager Job Vacancy

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Euston Digital is recruiting!

We’re looking for an experienced SEO manager to work on our growing portfolio of Search Engine Optimisation clients. We’ve successfully boosted many websites to the to the top of Google, Yahoo and Bing and we want you to help us get even better.

About you

You need to have a proven track record in SEO. We want to see your experience in on page analysis, copy writing, technical skills and link building. You need to have case studies. And you need to be totally into SEO!

About Us

We are a young, interesting and fun team based in London Waterloo. We’re good at what we do. We want you to help us be better. And in return we’ll help you too.

What’s next?

If you’d like to know more, or have some questions to ask please send an email to nick@eustondigital.co.uk

Tags: job, search engine optimisation, SEO
Posted in Jobs | No Comments »

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

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

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!

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

Tags: robot.txt, SEO
Posted in PPC | 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 | 1 Comment »

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