London SEO Services
London Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can give you a massive advantage in your online marketing. The three biggest search engines are Google, Yahoo and Bing. Collectively they provide search information for millions of people in the UK.
In the UK, searches in Google are responsible for a massive 90% of all online traffic. Traffic from Bing is growing but is still under 6% whilst traffic from Yahoo accounts for only 2.5 – 3.0% of all traffic. Other search engines like Ask Jeeves, Aol and Altavista make up the remaining 1.0-1.5% of traffic.
(Ref: http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-GB-monthly-201301-201306)
The primary function of a search engine is to sort through the content on a web page and return a relevant result to the user’s input, otherwise known as the search phrase. Relevant content is ranked high in the SERPS (search engine results pages) and this helps to grab the attention of the user.
SEO is the process of helping a website to rank higher in the search engine. Most of the focus goes into Google’s search results since it is the dominant player amongst the search engines.
I’ll help you understand how SEO services work.
SEO falls into two basic categories:
i) On Page SEO
ii) Off Page SEO
On Page SEO Services
The core of On Page SEO is based on the content of a website’s page and how that content is laid out. When a search engine bot crawls a website it sees the content on the page, whether it be words or media (images, audio and video).
The search engine sums up the content on the page and decides if it is relevant information based on the title of the page. However, with so many competing websites based in the same niche, it’s not possible for a search engine to rank a website purely on the content. So it looks into other On Page factors.
1. On Page Factor – Relevance
One of these factors is the relevance that visitors place on the site. This is determined by how long a visitor stays on the page and whether they click through to other pages on the website. If a visitor hits your website but then immediately clicks away (for example by hitting the back button or closing that tab in their browser), this gives an indication to Google that your site was not relevant to that user based on the search phrase they input into Google.
2. On Page Factor – Time On Website
The length of time that a visitor spends on your website is often referred to as the bounce rate. If the visitor only spends a few seconds on your website, because they can’t find the information which they are looking for, then this is called a high bounce rate. If Google sees that you are getting too many high bounce rates it will look to rank other websites above yours that it deems more relevant.
3. On Page Factor – Mobile And Flash
For this reason, you should make sure that your website design is visually appealing. Of course, this isn’t the be all and end all.
Lots of websites were built in Flash technology (developed by Adobe) but there was a big problem with this.
Google was unable to interpret the information on a website that was built in Flash and so it chose to ignore the visual content.
With the recent growth in mobile browsing, and the inability of the iPhone and iPad to display websites that use Flash, the majority of businesses are now moving away from this technology. If your website is built in Flash then it’s important that you understand that you’re losing a lot of traffic (online visitors) because it will be harder to rank in Google.
You’ll also be missing out on a big chunk of mobile traffic because Adobe has stopped updating Flash for mobile on the Android platform. This means that any mobile device running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and above won’t be able to read your Flash website.
If you’re thinking about employing SEO Services, then your first task should be to ensure that your website can be easily crawled and is easily accessible from a mobile device (smartphone or tablet).
4. On Page Factor – Site Load Time
This leads onto another On Page SEO factor: load time. Google does not like websites that take a long time to load. This means more than a few seconds. Although it can be visually appealing to have lots of media on your page, you should think carefully about how you display this media.
For example, if you have a video to display, then do not upload the video to your own website. This will increase the bandwidth and the time that it takes for the site to load. Instead, use a video hosting service like YouTube and use the embed feature to paste the code into your webpage. If you have images to display, consider reducing the size. It is possible to optimise images without sacrificing too much on quality by simply changing the format of the image to a more web friendly format.
The big factors that play a part in On Page Search Engine Optimisation include:
Content, title, keywords, description, tags, links (to other websites or inner pages), use of media and site structure.
Site structure is based on how easy it is for Google to crawl your website.
This can be determined by your theme (relevant if you are using the wordpress content management system), the presence of a sitemap and links to other pages.
On Page SEO services focus on the individual elements of a web page. These are all factors that a webmaster has in their control. It is important however, to keep your website looking natural. Google has made it very clear that it doesn’t like over optimisation. So keep your content relevant for your readers instead of trying to optimise your content for the search engines through keyword stuffing.
Remember, by keeping your content relevant, you will keep visitors on your site for longer. There’s no point in being ranked at the top of page one if your visitors are put off by the poor copy on your webpage.
Content Quality
The quality of your content is a reflection of how relevant the content is to your target audience, the originality and also how compelling the copy is. If your content is littered with poor grammar, spelling mistakes and is keyword (also known as search phrases) stuffed, you will be putting off any visitors that come to your site.
In contrast, content that is well written and formatted with line and paragraph breaks will flow and help to retain the attention of your reader. This will help your rankings in the search engines.
Keyword stuffing was a strategy that Google once based it’s algorithms upon several years ago. These days, the algorithm is more sophisticated and there is no need to repetitively use your keyword because Google can detect if the rest of your content is relevant to your keyword phrase.
Latent Semantic Indexing
Google does this by utilising a process called LSI (latent semantic indexing). LSI in brief is the use of phrases that are similar to the keyword for which you are trying to rank. If your content has been written for humans then it will naturally contain phrases that are similar to your keyword so you do not need to stuff.
On Page Media
i) Videos
Google can detect the presence of an embedded video but it cannot detect all of the content within that video, for example the images.
If your video has speech then it is a good idea to upload the video to YouTube, which is owned by Google.
YouTube has software that can detect the speech within a video and it then attempts to work out how relevant the content within the video is to the video’s title.
YouTube provides a transcription service free of charge and this can be downloaded by selecting the CC (Closed Captions) option.
The transcription service provided by YouTube isn’t perfect however so it is a good idea to provide your own transcription of the audio content and display this on your webpage where the video is embedded. If you use a video hosting service like Vimeo or Daily Motion, then providing a transcription will be even more important if you want Google to understand the content within your video.
Using a video hosting service (where you upload your video to an external site and then embed it onto your own website) is a sensible option if you want to keep your expenses down. If you choose to keep the content of your video on your own web host then the site will not only load slower but your bandwidth will also get eaten up much faster.
If your video is viewed several times and your allocated bandwidth gets used up, your web hosting company will contact you and request that you move to a dedicated server. If you refuse, then your website hosting will temporarily come down until you either increase your bandwidth or your allowance is reset. A reset usually occurs the following month.
“One Of The Benefits Of Video Is Higher User Engagement”
One of the benefits of using video is that it helps to engage your audience. This keeps them on the page for longer, which in turn helps with your On Page SEO.
Embedding a video has other advantages too, particularly if you are trying to rank the video in Google separately. An embedded video counts as a backlink to the video.
This helps to increase the video’s authority and also with Off Page SEO for the website, because you are making the website more attractive to link to.
ii) Pictures
An image (picture) can’t be read by Google’s bots (also known as search spiders).
However, Google can detect the size of the picture, the amount of pixels, and it can also read the alt txt (alternate text) and the title of the image.
It is a good idea therefore to optimise the image with relevant keywords to help add value to the content on the page.
Images can help with user retention as they tell a story of their own so it is a good idea to include them within your content on the web page.
Appropriate Linking Structure
Navigation of your website is a key factor for both your readers and also for the search engines. If you have inner pages on your website which are not linked to, then Google may not be able to find these and it won’t end up indexing these pages in its algorithms. If this happens then whatever content you have on your page will go to waste and you’ll need to find alternative ways of sending traffic to that page if you want visitors to read the content.
Of course, there may be situations where you don’t want Google to find and index a page, for example one that contains a download link to content that you want to limit access to (for example by password protecting or making it available only through a shopping cart purchase).
If your site is small then it should be possible to link to the inner pages of your website by creating an anchor text link from your homepage.
Alternatively you can make use of navigation menu bar options and linking at the top, bottom or within an article to help with the navigation to another page.
Using breadcrumbs on your website will also help with the navigation experience. This is where links on the page are displayed in order, like a daisy chain. So the first link on the page will usually be the home page, followed by a navigation menu tab link, and then any inner pages as follows:
The options above are displayed on the inner pages to help the user get back to the Home Page or the Menu Page without having to hit the back button in the browser.
If on page navigation is correctly set up then it can be very powerful for On Page SEO. Good On Page SEO can help with ranking, primarily by reducing the reliance of the Off Page SEO backlinks.
Be careful with your On Page Optimisation. Keep in mind that whatever you do should look natural. This will keep you out of trouble with the search engines, particularly with the recent Penguin updates which focussed heavily on over optimisation.
Advanced On Page SEO
I’ve described the basics of SEO above. There are more advanced strategies but I would recommend that you leave these to the professionals. There is a fine line between balanced optimisation and over optimisation.
If you attempt to perform advanced On Page SEO strategies then you could be setting yourself for a penalty from Google. The basics that I have described above will actually get you much further than the majority of websites out there.
Most business owners do not have the time to search for the information that Google sends out to the public about how to set up your On Page SEO. If you follow the basics above, you will already be ahead of the curve.
Off Page SEO Services
Off Page SEO relates to any reference that is made to your site on the Internet. This could include how your website is talked about in social media networks, whether your website is featured in a business directory or a newsfeed, or how many other sites are linking back to the content on your own web pages.
A complete SEO service will include both On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. If you are in a low competition niche then On Page SEO is sometimes good enough to rank on its own. But with more business owners employing SEO firms or Internet Marketing companies to help them get a competitive advantage in their industry, Off Page SEO is now becoming increasingly important.
What Are The Biggest Off Page SEO Ranking Factors?
I go into more detail about this here in my ‘What’s Working In SEO Today’ report. SEO has changed considerably since Google began releasing its Panda and Penguin algorithm updates in 2011.
One of the biggest changes is the way in which Google wants to see a website acquiring links naturally. This means that the days of spamming the web and sending 10,000 backlinks to a website are well and truly gone. This strategy did work some years back but today it’s no longer the case.
If you employ an SEO consultant that engages in this old practice, your site will end up getting penalised by Google for un-natural link building.
If your website is registered with Google webmaster tools then you will receive notices from Google informing you that they are unhappy with your attempts to rank your site.
Be careful about whom your employ to perform your SEO.
You could end up out of pocket and with a penalty that causes lower rankings or worse, Google may end up de-indexing your site. This can happen if you or your SEO firm engage in black hat tactics or if you ignore warnings that Google sends to you in the webmaster tools.
To help your link building look natural, you need to pay close attention to 3 factors:
i) The relevancy of the sites that link to you
ii) The anchor text that is used to link back to your site
iii) The frequency of how often you build links
Think about this for a second. If your site is in the technology niche, then it’s not likely that you’ll be receiving a link from a site that is built on dog grooming right?
That’s not to say that you won’t receive any link juice from a site that is deemed to have high authority by Google in the dog grooming niche, but if you suddenly start to get a ton of links from sites that are not relevant to your own niche, this can trigger a penalty in Google’s algorithms.
To look natural to Google, you won’t want to have every single site that links back to you use the same anchor text that you are trying to rank for.
If you found a piece of content that was valuable to your subscribers and that you wanted to share with them, would you really be using something like “Italian Restaurant London” as your anchor text or would you be more likely to say:
“I’ve found a terrific recipe for Spaghetti Bolognese, click here” as your anchor text?
“Sending A Thousand Links To Your Website”
And finally, you don’t want to be sending a thousand links to your website every single day unless your website already has some established authority and is receiving close to this number of backlinks on a consistent basis already.
For a website that has had little to no SEO done on it, it does not look natural to suddenly receive a spike in the number of backlinks and look natural at the same time, unless there is a good reason.
And if there is a good reason, for example a big event is occurring, then it’s likely that your website will be receiving a large number of backlinks from all across the Internet and from different sources, rather than from just an isolated few sources as often happens with SEO campaigns.
Video SEO Ranking Services
SEO does not have to be restricted to just a website or a particular page on a website. This is the old school way of thinking.
Today’s audience are used to watching video from their mobile devices and engaging with other users by leaving comments on newsfeeds and social media platforms.
If you want to stand out from your competitors then you need to make sure that you have multiple ways of connecting with your audience. This means creating several profiles instead of restricting yourself to just the one website.
One of the best ways to increase user engagement with your own brand is through video. Google recognises the importance of video, particularly as it owns YouTube, and so if you are conducting an SEO campaign, do not over look the importance of video.
Some people don’t want to read over hundreds of words of content. Instead, they would prefer to watch a 2 or 3 minute video and see if they like your content that way.
Imagine that you are in charge of Apple for a minute. Would you, as a customer of Apple, prefer to read an article about how great the next iPhone is or would you prefer to be shown the features and benefits in a short video?
Some of your audience prefer to see copy on a page but others prefer to watch a video. If you are only catering for one section of your target audience, you could be losing a significant chunk of customers to your competition.
“Video Stands Out Like A Sore Thumb”
Another advantage of ranking a video in Google is that video stands out. Have you noticed that Google displays a video with a thumbnail in the search results? Where as a regular website just has text next to it. If a video and a website are adjacent to each other in the listings, which do you think would get more click throughs? In the majority of cases it will be the listing that stands out and this will be the video.
Video SEO is an extremely powerful service if it is done correctly. SEO for YouTube videos is different to SEO for regular websites though. Sending backlinks to a YouTube video (equivalent to Off Page SEO) is not enough to get a video ranked highly.
For video, on page optimisation (equivalent to On Page SEO) is very important. The rules for video are different to the rules for a website.
If you want to find out more about Video SEO then get in touch here.
Want To Know A Trade Secret?
I was chatting to a fellow SEO Consultant in London last year and he told me how threatened he felt by all of the SEO companies that were sending out bulk emails from India.
He felt that he could no longer compete on the price and that he was going to try his hand at offering other Internet Marketing services.
I then told him something which stopped him from giving up his passion. I said to him: “John, if one your clients (local business owners) were to get into a race, do you think they would prefer to own a Nissan Micra or a Ferrari?”
John replied to me: “Well, obviously the Ferrari. Why on earth would anyone want to race in the Nissan Micra?”
How Much Do You Charge For SEO Services?
The answer that I gave to John is how I differentiate myself from other companies that ‘claim’ to offer SEO services. The clients that take me on for my own SEO services know that they are getting the real deal.
I don’t proclaim to be the cheapest because I don’t need to be. My clients talk with me, on the phone or face to face, and they know that there’s a real person involved here. Not somebody hiding behind a computer screen on the other side of the world.
My clients also know that I understand SEO better than somebody who’s been trained to send out several hundred emails a day offering SEO services to anyone with an email address. The funny thing is that I receive these spam emails too, even though I am an SEO consultant.
I was bold enough to produce my free report on what is working today because I offer my services with integrity. If your site has been irreparably damaged through a previous SEO campaign, with the result that it is de-indexed or hit with a big penalty, then I will not accept your money for a campaign on that site.
I stay at the forefront of my industry by networking with other specialists. This helps me to stay on the cutting edge which in turn benefits my clients. I know that many of my competitors will be reading the information on this website but that’s fine with me.
With most things in life, you generally get what you pay for. If you want a cheap car to help you get by, then go to the nearest Nissan dealership and pick up that Micra.
But what if you want the Ferrari
You want to SUPER CHARGE your SEO?
If you would prefer to feel secure knowing that you’re getting someone who is on the cutting edge and who understands what is working today (download my report here) then you’re in the right place.
My motive is to provide you with value. That means you getting a return on your investment. If you don’t get a return then sooner or later, we’ll end up parting ways. I am also different to other SEO companies in India because I don’t offer a one size fits all. If I offered this, I would be providing you with a disservice because not every industry is the same.
If your niche requires additional work then I will tell you up front. You can then decide if you want to take the risk of going with someone unscrupulous who offers you a quicker result but who will inevitably leave you high and dry while you’re waiting.
If you use any set of SEO services, I urge you to make sure that it’s customised to your own business. Make sure that you get an assessment of your existing content, your existing ranking and an analysis of your competition. This will give you a realistic timeframe of how long it will take for you to rank.
Contact me here and we’ll have an informal chat about what I can do for you. I’ll tell you where your biggest opportunities lie and where to start.
Thank you for reading the content on this page.
