Blog - Page 2 of 3 - CommerceTuned - Search Engine Optimisation Services

31 August 2017

The Perils of Web Hosting on Search Engine Placements

Yes indeed, who would have thought it – your web hosting provider could indirectly be costing you the chance of good placements in the major search engine Google. How can this be? Well the problem is the physical location of the hosting centre itself. Now, while you may feel you have signed up with a UK hosting company, actually all their hosting centres can be in a completely different location such as the US or Germany. Now this little quirk doesn’t really have many side-effects, as you may well be getting very good value and good technical support from your

31 August 2017

Everything you need to know to start link building (Part 2)

Welcome to part two of this very important part of search engine optimisation – link building. Now we’ve already covered the outbound linking policies you should consider if you are creating a hub site like a business directory, now we’ll take a look at the inbound link strategies you should think about when creating an authority site. Inbound links An authority website can be defined as a respected online source of information about a topic or range of subjects. Naturally the search engines are keen to provide the most useful websites at the top of the search results, so that people will keep using them

31 August 2017

Everything you need to know to start link building (Part 1)

Search engines use a number of different methods to determine how to rank websites in their listings, and one of the most increasingly weighted methods is links – hyperlinked text pointing to an external URL. ‘Links’ refers to the number and quality of links both pointing into your website and pointing out from your website, so we shall take a look at these one at a time. It is important to remember that Google, MSN, and Yahoo all place emphasis on the linking ‘value’ of your website. Outbound links If you enter any number of queries into search engines these

31 August 2017

What is Viral Marketing and how does it work?

What is Viral Marketing? The principle behind Viral Marketing is that it encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others. The advantage of getting individuals to pass on a marketing message is obvious – these people become your marketing team, and do it for free. How does it work? There are 2 key elements to a viral marketing campaign that need to be addressed: The Incentive Easy Forwarding Design of Message 1. The Incentive The most successful viral marketing will provide people with an incentive to participate – i.e. a reason to pass on the message to others.

31 August 2017

Link Affiliation – Some simple tips

Exchanging links to other websites is a beneficial method of increasing traffic to your own site. Say you are a real estate firm focused on selling property within a specific County or State, you could provide links to local solicitors, house movers, and offer links to local businesses that all revolve around the purchase of a house in your area. By exchanging links to all the local sites you are also going to get increased traffic from their websites, benefiting by receiving targeted traffic if they are popular sites. Another key benefit to having sites link to yours is the

31 August 2017

Link Building – Why to do it!

The major search engines all have different ways of ranking websites and thus determining where you appear in search results on different phrases. Search Engine Optimisation is the common and often vaunted method of increasing your rankings and likelihood of appearing high up in results on search phrases. Google however use their own system for rating websites called PageRank (PR). This rating is out of 10 and refers to the importance of a web page according to the Google ranking system. No-one outside of Google can claim to understand 100% how this ranking works, but through constant analysis patterns develop and through

31 August 2017

How Content Management Systems affect SEO

If you were to ask someone who was looking to invest in a website or ecommerce venture nowadays what their priorities were, they would more than likely reply:- To have easy to manage and author content To be found by search engines However, with the growth of the more established CMS solutions such as Vignette, MS CMS, and Site Solved, there are custom, bespoke systems created on-demand by smaller businesses, for smaller businesses. If you are in a position where money is tight, then the temptation is to go with the local, cheaper option for controlling and making it easier to author your

31 August 2017

What type of companies benefit most from SEO?

If you run a website, one of the most obvious ways of blowing some of your marketing budget is on Search Engine Optimisation, but how do you know if it’s a service that will benefit your business? Is the money better spent on other methods of online or offline advertising and marketing? This is an interesting question which we will address in this month’s SEO article. When considering search engine optimisation, you need to ask yourself a few questions which will help determine if it’s a viable return on investment:- What do I want to achieve? Take a look at

31 August 2017

Google punishing reciprocal links?

Everyone in the world of SEO has known for a link time that links pointing to your website are good, and the more you have of them the better. For years reciprocal linking has been a commonly used strategy for improving your Google page rank, gaining higher rankings and being the envy of all your friends. You approach a fellow webmaster requesting a link on their website and vice versa, you mutually oblige, slap each other on the back and off you go to find another link partner to dance with. However it really was only a matter of time before Google twigged

31 August 2017

How much is too much, can you over-optimise?

Search Engine Optimisation is the art of increasing the ranking of a website. There are various methods achieved to do this, and a common question asked is “Can I over-optimise my website?” and thus risked getting banned? There is no simple answer to this question because if you were to follow conventional SEO logic then every website would be banned that adopted so-called “black hat” Search engine tactics. An example of this is putting text on the page that is the same colour as the background so it does not appear on the page to the user, but the spiders index

31 August 2017

How to Choose the best keywords for your website

Ok, you are deciding on what keywords you should optimise your website for, or you are looking at investing in a Pay per click (PPC) marketing campaign, how do you determine what are the best phrases to use? One of the most common ploys Search Engine Optimisation companies will use with you, to get your cash and appear to have achieved great results, is to optimise your website for phrases that are either not being searched for by users, or are not competitive phrases. By achieving a high ranking for either of these, you will not see an increase in traffic to

31 August 2017

Pay Per Clicks – Is it worth it?

The days of quality free search engine submission and listings have all but disappeared. The major search engines realised that providing a quality index of websites that was growing by thousands per day, and making the necessary technical advancements to remain competitive amongst the major engines was not bringing home the bacon. This problem created the concept of paying a fee to be placed within the index, and most recently paying for traffic directed to your website from a specific search engine – and pay-per-click marketing was born. So is PPC marketing worthwhile? The simple answer is yes, as long as it thoroughly researched

31 August 2017

Search Engine Optimisation – Target the right audience

So you’ve got your web site up and running and now it’s time to submit it to the search engines; how are you going to make sure that you get the relevant audience to your website? Here are a few key points to consider when looking at optimising:- Your brand identity You may have built your web site to support and enhance your offline business, such as your shop or factory for example. You need to make sure that your brand is protected on the Internet. Your competitors may be selling the same products and services as you, and in

31 August 2017

Black Hat Search Engine Optimisation

Ever wanted that coveted top spot in Google so badly that you’d do anything to get it? There are all kinds of tactics and practices that can be applied to websites in order to artificially elevate the search engine placements; you are now entering the world of ‘black hat search engine optimisation‘. This term refers to the various methods used which are not considered ethical by the search engines themselves, and generally involves trying to fool them to some degree. There are numerous methods available – this article will no doubt spawn more sequels than Rocky – so keep coming

31 August 2017

The Benefits of Multi-lingual Search Engine Optimisation

We are definitely not alone in the search universe – people from across the globe type in an array of different search queries to find products and services, using their own favourite engine, and most importantly (at least in the case of this article) in their own native language. The world is a small place now thanks to the internet, and yet the majority of businesses still write all their website content solely in English, despite the fact that once they add the right amount of shipping cost they could ship products from Taiwan to Timbuktu. Ok, yes there is

31 August 2017

The Rise of Social Media and Search Engine Optimisation

In the last few years a phenomenon has been sweeping across the online community, social media. Sites such as YouTube, Myspace and Facebook have evolved and become extremely popular with millions of people creating a pages about themselves, their band, their company, and just about anything they’re involved with. There are millions of views of videos per week on YouTube which again make it a highly successful social media site that recently lead to the acquisition of the site by Google. So are there opportunities that could be exploited by someone clever and quick enough to manipulate these tools for their benefit? Social media is yet another form

31 August 2017

Is it time to rethink your link-building strategy?

Links are good, right? The more links we have pointing to our websites the better we will rank, right? Well that’s not necessarily the case, as link-building strategies are fraught with pitfalls and potential penalties that can do more harm than good, so the canny link-builder is one that always evolves and stays one step ahead of the search engines. Why link-build? I won’t waste too much time on this, because if you don’t already know that link popularity is a major factor in the Google algorithm for ranking websites then you’re not ready for getting under the bonnet of link-building strategies,

31 August 2017

The importance of the SEO Copywriter in achieving results

Search engine optimisation has changed over the years. As a good SEO, you have to change with the times and constantly update the techniques and requirements involved in achieving and maintaining high search engine listings for your clients. One of the biggest shifts over the last few years has been the movement away from code and toward content-based changes in order to improve your listings. SEO has never been rocket science; successful rankings has always been based on hard work. Now that the focus of that hard work has moved firmly onto the actual content on your website, it benefits everyone –

31 August 2017

Should an SEO quote be “performance – based”?

I have often been asked by potential clients: “Will your company work on the basis that if what you do doesn’t work, we don’t pay you?”. This request has been a common occurrence recently, and I believe there are two reasons for this: More people are becoming aware of SEO and the need for it There are an increasing number of cowboys in the industry taking advantage of the current boom, which in turn is producing more clients who’ve had a bad experience they aren’t looking to repeat. So the question is, does natural SEO work as a ‘paid-performance’ model, or should

31 August 2017

Text link advertising – will the market die or evolve?

Unless you’ve been hiking around the jungles of Borneo for the past few months, you’ll no doubt be aware of the raging debate in the SEO world around paid links, and Google’s crack-down on sites selling text links. A brief summary for those just recovering from their trek is as follows: Google algorithm places a lot of emphasis on the number, quality, and theme of the links that point to your website People pay websites to put a text link on their site Google really doesn’t like this attempt to manipulate their algorithm and cracks down on link sellers So where are