Written by webmaster

Combine Experiential Marketing with SEO

In the endless barrage of advertisements, both digital and physical, it can be hard to stand out, particularly when your competitors can spend top dollar to hack into first place on Google Ads. Just because it’s easy to spend money on loud advertising- it doesn’t mean you have to! In fact, more customers are likely to skip your ads than a few years ago: with streaming services, click-aways and pop-up blockers becoming standard, even the big shots are having a hard time making an impact.

So what else can we do to ensure we stand out in the marketing landscape?

Something known as experiential marketing plays a crucial role in making an impact on your audience. Experiences, unlike material objects, are likely to stick in consumer’s minds and increase positive brand awareness.

Done properly- smart brand activation uses this to your advantage by following three basic guidelines for an experiential marketing campaign:

Make the Experience Customer-Centric:

Ensure that your customers get the most out of the experience and come away feeling entertained and informed. There are a few ways to find out what your customers need most: search for feedback on social media, send out a survey with your next mailing list, or even just ask them in person!

Go Multi-media/multi-channel!

Shout it out loud and clear! When advertising for your latest spectacle, use every social media platform available to you. Post it with a custom hashtag. Post updates. Keep up that momentum during and after the event. If you have the resources, don’t forget the traditional pillars of T.V., print and radio. If you’ve been paying attention to your business, you should know which of these work best with your target audience.

Capitalise on organic searches!

As opposed to the Pay Per Click model, which allows a company to buy the top spot in the search engine results, organic searches try to connect consumers with what they need by using an algorithm that searches specific keywords. Quality of content is determined by how often other sites link to your work (and the quality of those sites), how many people engage with and stay on your site, your loading speeds, and how much unique information is on there. Making your content algorithm friendly is cost-effective, easy to track and will make your content easier for potential customers to find and navigate.

Use the latest in tech and entertainment to develop a fun photo booth experience that allows you to track audience participation and engagement through data capture and analytics, while also providing a positive experience that will leave your customers wanting more! Let experiential marketing pick up the heavy lifting of managing and retaining loyal customers and followers once the right search engine opitmisation campaign has brought them to your door!

Written by webmaster

SEO Case Study, Melbourne Australia

A question I am often asked is ‘Can I do my own SEO?’. It is a very fair question given the amount of overheads small businesses have these days. The short answer is – Yes! In fact, anyone can learn SEO. But there are factors to take into consideration before deciding if this is the right way forward for your business.

Below is a case study about a small business who approached me with this question, and the steps we took to ensure they were able to confidently optimise their own website on an ongoing basis.

When the team at Shelves for Shops contacted me about their website and SEO concerns we decided the best course of action was for their designated ‘SEO person’ to attend one of my short courses. This offers an introduction into what search engine optimisation is all about. It is often after a course that a business will decide whether they are happy to manage their own optimisation, or engage a professional to take the reigns for them. There is no right or wrong answer. In fact, most of the time businesses opt out of managing it themselves simply because they don’t have the time to do so, and their time is better spent working ‘in’ the business that ‘on’ it.

Their primary concern was the platform their website was built on meant they had little to no control over managing the content themselves. Aside from the basic functions, such as adding and removing products, they were at the mercy of their web developer.

For ever the smallest of tasks (like changing images, or the colour of font), they had to email their developer and ask them to make changes. And of course, with every change, came a bill.

Frustrated with the lack of control in a website that was outdated and not SEO friendly, we decided the best way forward was to build a new website on a user-friendly system that would allow the business to have the autonomy they required.

Their requirements included an online shopping platform with the ability to process large sales and hold a catalogue of over 2000 items, an area in which the current website lacked. We also discovered their design was not responsive, a big no no for websites these days.

Most importantly, they need a CMS (content management system) that allowed them to input their own SEO data, including title tags, meta descriptions AND the ability to create google friendly URL’s.

In addition to this, I found lots of technical issues, including multiple 404 errors, dodgy links and slow loading times, all of which were contributing to the businesses overall website rank.

After the website went live and stabilised we saw an increase in rank for primary keywords almost immediately. Other factors also improved, including the amount of users visiting the website, the time spent on the website, and in turn, the amount of enquiries that came through increased.

Once the site was up and running the business started a You Tube channel focussed on educating the customers on their products and ‘How To’ videos. We were able to utilise these videos on the website, in turn improving the user experience.

The business also started a blog, and shared the posts shared on social media. I encourage the team to blog as often as they can.

But none of the above means anything if the results are not tracked. By introducing the business to simple but effective research and tracking platforms, they were able to identify their strengths and weaknesses and optimise pages accordingly.

After taking control of their website, rankings and results, the team felt much more confident managing their SEO ongoing. I now give the business ongoing SEO and technical support when required.

A key learning the business took away, is that they will never ‘finish’ optimising their website. SEO is an ongoing and ever-changing task and it’s important to keep up to date with best practice.

Written by webmaster

Fixing the Problem of “Business Not Appearing in Search”

It’s disconcerting when branded searches for your name or your business take visitors to other websites, and not your primary domain. Not ranking for your business name- or branded search- is not a final result. Things can be done to reverse the situation.

If your website doesn’t appear in search results for your own name, it can understandably- cause you concern. The same advice for making your website show at the top for “branded searches” applies to dealing with the problem of another business ranking for your name. It can- and does happen- with alarming frequency- and particularly with social media accounts outranking the brand’s own website.

There are things website owners can do that effectively steal traffic away from the ‘real’ destination URL. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Engaging our SEO service will start you off with everything in your favour.

If you are confident and want to go it alone, read on.

Let’s take a look what you can do, when your business does not show prominently for branded queries, in Google search.

Why Your Website Might Not Show in Search Results

There are many reasons why a website might not appear in organic search results. We’re speaking about new websites- under 6 months old.

Here are the main reasons, the ones we encounter most often:

The website has just been published, and hasn’t been around long enough to get found, crawled, indexed and ranked.
There is a serious technical error with the site, like a “no index, no follow” directive.
The website content is of such poor quality, it’s not allowing the site to be prominently listed.
The site is a sub domain of a free online website builder- generally these types of sites do not rank well for anything but the lowest competition-level terms.
The owner has engaged a dubious SEO company from the start, who have effectively killed the domain.
The domain is carrying a previous owner’s penalty.
The website has been over optimized- even excessive use of a brand name can constitute spam.

If you want to have the authoritative “brand” website or listing within search, you should focus on building completeness into your content. For instance- a value-packed website wishing to rank for “baking bread” would be expected to use words like:

Flour
Water
Oven
Temperature

These are all items one would expect to find, on a trustworthy website about baking bread. There would be more too- but you’ll have to visit a reputable bread baking resource online to find out.

Google works hard to present the real, most authoritative result for queries. Validating your business helps align your website with the entity of your business.

Entities form part of Google’s Knowledge Graph. A good example of the Knowledge Graph at work, happens when you Google a movie star. You get references to the movies they’ve been in, any children, their birthday- and more.

This image helps explain entities and shows how Google’s Knowledge Graph presents information about the subject of our search, without us having implicitly typed those more in-depth queries in.

Steps to Take to Rank for Your Business Name or Brand

Claim your Google listing. That’s the very first thing you should do. They’ll either send a postcard to the address you nominate- or call you almost instantly with a code that you’ll have to enter on the listing.
Optimise your website properly.
What’s your Home Page browser bar title? Does it simply say “Home”?
Put something in there which makes a statement- a keyword or two- and include the name of your business- as it appears to the public.

While we’re on the subject of optimising, be sure your name, address and phone number all match other instances of how they appear online. If you’re listed in the local phone directory, or a business chamber of commerce directory- ensure consistency throughout all of them.

Build some “rel=”index,follow” branded links. This one is a no-brainer. Get some inbound linking from reputable websites, and use the name of your business as the anchor text. Remember the link title too.

Get some reviews. These add credibility to your operation, and hopefully one of them will cite your URL.

Ensure you have a strong domain name. This one- is very important. Try to get a (dot)com. As a second choice, secure the top level domain (TLD) for your country. The domain name should, ideally- mention your brand. If you are chasing a keyword rich TLD, then it might be wise to register that name as well as your brand TLD.

Get good hosting- and point your domain to your own host.
Sub-domains don’t rank nearly as well. How many Weebly or Wix sites do you see ranking for terms where there is active competition? Set yourself up well right from the start. Get a good domain, build a proper website, paying attention to the fundamentals of SEO during development.

You might think you have no competition or very few competitors now… Once the only motor cars on the planet were built by Ford.

Head over to the Google Business Portal and complete all the details required to validate.

What If Someone Else Appears Instead of You?

What’s even worse- is having to deal with someone else- another website appearing higher than yours, when someone searches your business name. This happens more often than people realize. Sometimes it’s by accident- other times it’s a deliberate attempt to steal traffic away from the ‘real’ domain.

If someone else- or another business- outranks you for your own business name- they have a chance to steal the attention of the visitor clicking on that particular search result. If their website is compelling enough, the searcher might not even get to the ‘real” domain.

Get your Google Business Listing in order. Follow through with entering your business details in reputable directories within the city, state or country that’s relevant. For Australian businesses we’d suggest the Yellow Pages, True Local, Start Local, Hot Frog, C’mon Aussie and DLook. They’ll get you started. Ensure the Name Address and Phone Number fields are filled out consistently.

The intention here is to build your citations- to validate and amplify to search engine crawlers, databases and real people- who you are, what your name is and where you operate from.

remember to make the descriptive text within each listing unique. Don’t copy the same 3 lines about your mission statement and company philosophy to every directory. Even if you say the same thing- say it differently each time.

Get some reviews- this associates other validated people with the entity that is the business you own or operate.

Written by webmaster

Removing IDs from URLs in Joomla

Joomla 3.7 made some changes to the way we manage the inclusion of ID numbers for articles within the Blog category. When you block those digits from being rendered in your URLs or aliases, the pages will get a boost in SEO-friendliness. The biggest risk- and it’s a serious one- is the damage which can be done to your organic rank. If you don’t sort the ID issue, all your blog URLs will suddenly change- to “ID number inclusive” ones. If your original URL was something like 5-tips-for-better-seo it might suddenly become 161-5-tips-for-better-seo which looks wrong even before someone clicks it. If your URL looks bad, you won’t get as much traffic click through to your website.

This also means any instances of the former URLs- from internal or external links- will produce a 404 “Page not Found” error.

Aside from providing a poor user experience, your rankings will suffer- regardless what is written elsewhere.

We ran tests and certain pages slipped 10 positions within 48 hours of us intentionally breaking 3 links. When the links were restored and new sitemaps generated, the rankings returned 5 days later. Be vigilant when doing Joomla upgrades, and maintain a close watch over the SEO friendliness of your URLs.

When did you last backup your website- that’s all of it- database and files?

Remember- an untested backup is as good as no backup at all.

I’m going to recommend you download and install Akeeba Backup.

This plug-in has been around for a long time- and receives regular updates.
It was created by Nicholas Dionysopoulos after he lost four years’ work. Luckily the hard drives were able to be recovered after a long process- but it left Nick with the intention that nobody should have to suffer through what he experienced.

Let’s Get Started

It’s great you’ve backed up your complete website, and downloaded it to a local drive!

This information is applicable to Joomla 3.7 and will be updated here on this page, as versions change, only if a different technique is required.

Log In To Your Server

Within the public_html directory- or root directory of your site, follow the path /administrator/components/com_content and look in there for the config.xml file.
This is the file you will be editing.

Click the “Edit” icon shown at the top of the screenshot.

Make the changes we’ve described here- and remember to save the file before you close it. Adopt best practice techniques- use the “close” button which appears on the file, instead of just closing the browser’s window.
the path to the config xml file within the components srcset= com_content folder” itemprop=”image” width=”600″ height=”309″>
Follow the example image, and paste the following code where indicated, on the config.xml file:

  <field
 	name="sef_advanced_link"
 	type="radio"
 	class="btn-group btn-group-yesno"
 	default="0"
 	label="Sef Advanced Mode"
 	description="Remove ItemID from Content URL?">
 	<option value="1">JYES</option>
 	<option value="0">JNO</option>
 </field>

Paste the Code into the File

The following image shows what the new code will look like when it gets pasted to the file.

Note the position- you paste right after an existing ‘filed’ closing tag- and right before the closing ‘fieldset’ tag.

Remember to add the code as shown in the screenshot. One wrong move here- just one keystroke- will cause your site to throw an error. If you don’t feel confident editing such critical files, our search engine optimisation services include making adjustments to core files for better website performance. the path to the config xml file within the components srcset= com_content folder” itemprop=”image” width=”728″ height=”288″>

The Interface Before Adding the Custom Code

This is how the “Integration” tab of the “Global Configuration > Article” edit window renders the options before the custom code gets added. When you paste the code into the config.xml file, a custom set of buttons will be created within this Options window, to enable or disable the setting of SEF friendly URLs. the path to the config xml file within the components srcset= com_content folder” itemprop=”image” width=”600″ height=”369″>

After the Custom Code

Take a look at this screenshot, which contains a summary of how to reach the window- and also provides a view of the desired outcome. The new buttons are shown. Please remember to select “Yes” – that’s the green button- to get the benefit of the work you’ve done.

Now might also be a good time to check that you’ve followed best practice techniques for writing SEO titles. the path to the config xml file within the components srcset= com_content folder” itemprop=”image” width=”600″ height=”335″>

If you have followed the directions, the article IDs will no longer appear in your Joomla website’s URLs. Your website will continue to experience stable rankings which come from not having broken links.

Written by webmaster

Web Page Title Optimisation

Title Tags- sometimes called “Page Titles” or “Browser Bar Titles” appear in the head of every web page. They populate the upper chrome area of the browser bar and are considered to be the single most influential on-page SEO ranking factor. Understanding the relationship between the quality, uniqueness and relevance of the Page Title and applying that knowledge, sets you up to rank well for your keywords . Optimising Browser Page Titles correctly to accurately reflect the content of the page, is one of the primary tasks of on-page optimisation. When we provide seo services, the first on-page element we check is the title tag. How its been written- and how it relates to the rest of the content on that page, tells us a lot about the quality of any prior SEO and how we would expect the page to rank before we consider other factors.

In WordPress, the SEO plug-in “Yoast” refers to the page title as the “SEO title”.
Within a Joomla site, the Page Title is edited within a menu item under “Browser Title”.
Magento uses “Page Title” within the edit window.

Where to Edit Page Title Text

Page Title in a Magento Product

Here’s a screenshot showing the location of the browser bar title, within Magento, for a page displaying a product: assigning text for the browser bar page title, to a product within Magento

Browser Page Title within Joomla

The Joomla CMS requires that you access the Browser Title through the individual menu item, through the Menu Manager as shown here: editing the SEO title of a joomla page

Yoast Browser Page Title in WordPress

The following images show the location of the Page Title within a WordPress installation running Yoast.
populating the browser page title text field within wordpress, using yoast

You should also uncheck the “Force Rewrite” checkbox which is found under “SEO” in the left sidebar of the admin interface.
Hover your mouse over “SEO” and select “Titles and Metas” from the fly out, to edit this property. the best setting for 'force rewrite' field in Yoast WordPress

The Role of the Title

A correctly written page title will do these three things well:

Promise the user what they should expect to find if they click the search result
Reinforce to search engines the real meaning of your page so that you can be assessed for relevance to the user’s query
Encourage search engine users to click the result- because a high rank does you no good unless people click through to your website

When you write a page title, it might work best if you write your page content first- then write a title which really fits with what you’ve produced.
If the title is not what you had in mind- then it’s best to rewrite the content until everything flows as a seamless piece.
If you can write a title first and diligently stick to the topic- then power to you!

However you do it, ensure that your page title is an accurate reflection of the contents of that particular url.

Think of your Page Title as an advertisement for your page. Your meta description is the copy for that ad.

More Tips- SEO Specifics

Follow these guidelines of high-ranking pages. There will always be pages which break the rules and rank highly- remember it’s possible to get a ranking boost using a number of different techniques and each SEO company has their own preferences.

Ensure your title is unique. Do not ever copy a title from another page on your website or from another domain.
Around 60 characters is a good length- don’t panic if the entire title is not visible in the blue link in search result.
Use descriptive text, as well as your primary keyword early in the title.
Use a pipe to separate short, sharp related phrases.
Longer phrases can be separated with commas.
Be judicial with keyword use- the more you use, the lower your relevance score on that page, for each keyword.
Synonyms work well- select them carefully.
Use natural language- something you could comfortably read out loud to an audience.
Be absolutely certain that your title accurately promises what the user should expect on the page.
Minimise the use of stop words- see this list of stop word examples for more information.

Page Title Output Code

In the image below, you can see three colors of shading.

The page title tag is shown in orange shading.

Green shading highlights the description sometimes called the seo snippet which often appears beneath the title within organic search results.

The blue tint shows the meta tag output code which is responsible for bringing the keywords into the head area of the page, from the keyword field of the CMS.

The image is also divided into two views, showing the php file which outputs the html, and how the html code appears when you view the page source in your web browser.

The output sequence of the shaded elements is not correct in this instance. At the moment, this is how they line up:

Keywords
Meta Description
Page Title

showing correlation between php code and html output of web page head code color coded image describing the code which outputs meta tags, browser title and keywords of dynamic cms website page

Getting the Sequence Right

The following image shows the elements appearing in the most seo-friendly sequence possible.
Here’s how it looks now:

Page Title
Meta Description
Keywords

If you’re unsure of how to arrange the code within the php file so your output matches the sequence we’ve shown here, get some professional advice or assign the task to us, and we’ll get it done for you.

Be careful editing core php files! One wrong space or comma can break a website!

if you need to edit a Joomla, WordPress or magento php file which relates to head code, it’s likely the changes you make will be required every time you update WordPress, Joomla or Magento.

Always back your site up, prior to making any significant changes.

optimised web page head code color coded image indicating the correct title and meta sequence of head code for SEO

Don’t Be at the Mercy of Your CMS

A good, SEO friendly CMS will enable you to manage important elements separately for every page, and not append or prepend any text to your custom input. Be particularly careful of custom web builder content management systems, which are often designed to make the construction of websites easy for novices. These platforms often have handicaps built in, as their market is the webmaster who is beginning their journey into site development.

Follow our SEO guidelines for writing the best page titles. The suggestions here are representative of the techniques we use as part of a balanced on-page optimisation project. When used and implemented correctly they will yield positive ranking gains.

Written by webmaster

Starting SEO Within eCommerce Websites

The single biggest error- is copying the product description and photos right off the manufacturer’s website or the wholesaler’s website. The massive problem here- is plagiarism. In SEO speak, it amounts to duplicate content. As Google and other search engines crawl and index your page, they face the puzzle of who to attribute the authority to, when two identical or very similar pages appear on different domains, for the same topic or product. It’s very likely that the other website- the one which originally had the content- has the authority status- and so (if you copy their material)- your website is the bad one- stealing from someone else.

The Answer?

Write unique content. It’s always possible to say the same thing differently, while still sticking to the facts. User reviews add uniqueness to a page, so do user generated images of the product in use. Encourage people to participate in your marketing. You’ll also have the benefit of social shares, recommendations and onward encouragement to their friends.

Structure Your Product Categories

It makes sense to humans and search engine robots- if the products which belong in a category are found under that category. If it’s essential to have a product listed twice- then use the tag known as rel=”canonical” to tell the search engines which page they should consider as the ‘real’ page for that item. Magento has this facility within the admin interface, other platforms may need a teeny bit of help from your developer. If your menu drop downs look a little long for the perfect user experience, have the single item on the top, then present a list of sub menu utems on the category page itself, so that you’re not diluting the SEO relevance of every other page on your website by having links pointing to everywhere. An example would be a page from the main menu featuring jackets. Each of your 100 jackets has the full menu bar on the page which also features 100 different types of bicycles you sell. Suddenly- there’s a lot of repeated, non-related content (bicycle links) appearing on all the pages of your website, relating to jackets.

Embrace the Power of Images

Your online store’s content management system needs to have a way for you to be able to assign your own file name, alt text and title text to every image on your website. A descriptive file name tells people and search engines what the image is. This helps- because search engines don’t understand the content of images the way people do. Optimised images lend structure to a page. They provide another layer of opportunity to build relevance and authority- two critical ranking factors. Do everything you can to not copy the same images in the same format onto your pages as your competitors have on theirs.

Get SEO for Your Online Shop

Simply hit the contact button- and arrange a personal consultation, for the best SEO for an ecommerce website. We can optimise your shopping cart platform, and give you some valuable insights on how your choice of technology and design either streamlines the conversion process, or stops it dead.

Written by webmaster

Setting SEO Prioirities for 2017

Make your plan manageable- you should be able to stick with it even in the most trying times, when you are absolutely snowed under with work within your business. If the likelihood of finding spare time seems dubious, then appoint someone within your organisation to manage the company SEO plan, with quantifiable benchmarks.

You invest a lot in your business- even if you carry no stock, have no commercial premises or extra help.
The sacrifices you make along the way are sometimes so high you can’t put a price on them. Search engine optimisation is often the last, critical part of the equation that’s needed to bring it all together- to get the show on the road.

To get you started in 2017, we are offering a massive 25% discount for all our SEO plans, as shown on the search engine optimisation prices page of our web site.
It might be just what you need, to encourage you to complete an enquiry form on our contact page.

Written by webmaster

Learn SEO at One of Our Workshops

Students of all levels, from basic to advanced, will find these study groups of value. There is a growing awareness of the need for seo, and if you have been daunted at the thought of learning the skills of successful search engine optimisation, these study courses will make it easy and enjoyable for you.

Our SEO Trainer speaks your language!

Simple, clear English that clearly articulates the message, means you won’t be scratching your head wondering what it was all about.

Live web site examples are used, and you are encouraged to submit your own web site for analysis and detailed manual review.

You’ll have the most comprehensive worksheet of recommendations to help get you up to speed, and boost your organic search rank. These will be specific to your own web site, not something related to technology which your web site doesn’t use.

The course runs for two and a half hours, and includes one-to-one seo mentoring and free seo consulting on the day.

We recommend you bring a laptop- tablets are not as versatile for looking at the code which makes up a web page. Most tablets have limits with executing javascript- some features like Yoast in WordPress are difficult to access, using iPads.

Ensure you have a power cord, your own means of accessing the internet- either a dongle, or through your mobile hot spot. Bring a pen or two and some writing paper for note-taking.

If you’re interested to learn more, read the article on the seo training page of our web site. If you need more details use the information on our contact page to be in touch.

Written by webmaster

Easy Things to Do for Better Rank

In order to get a web page or complete website ranking, be sure to attend to the obvious- ensure the robots or search engine crawlers can access, read and index the page. Alarmingly simple- yet all too often- we see webmasters with pages marked as ‘no index no follow’. Sometimes the whole site has blocked search engine spiders from accessing it. The most common cause is when a developer puts a no index no follow directive in the php file during development or staging, and forgets to remove it. This directive is not removed when ‘index,follow’ is enabled within a CMS admin setting.

Ensure you have webmaster tools enabled, and that you generate a new sitemap once you’ve made a new page. When search engine crawlers arrive at your website, they check the sitemap. It’s a great way to let them know you’ve created more content.

All your website pages should be accessible via a normal text link from within your website. This means there is at least one more point of entry to the page in addition to any menu bar links. Search engine crawlers are getting much better at parsing javascript used in some fancy navigation bars- however a text link ensures the bot will enter the linked page without hindrance.

Add something to the page that’s on topic and not covered elsewhere. If you are an expert in your field, publishing rank-worthy content, there will always be extra information you can bring to the discussion. Populate your page with digital assets- images, video and a podcast. Host some of the assets on your own server, and perhaps embed a video or two from external hosting services with a link back to your website.

We also recommend adding to, and updating the content within a page. Why do you think news sites rank so well? They have a team of content writers saturating the site with new material. Text, images video- all of these are being added every minute.

If the website maintains a blog, it’s a good idea to publish a link from an existing blog post to the new content, then follow up a week later with a new post also linking to the new page.

Of course it goes without saying- that your on-page search engine optimisation should meet all best-practice criteria.

Written by webmaster

Small Business Has an SEO Advantage!

The online advantage that comes from the highly agile nature of being a small business owner, means that a larger business can have it’s moves quashed in an instant, as they are launched, by a forward thinking operator. Free of the need to gain board or management approval, the small business owner can literally throw a cat among the pigeons in the seo world- and emerge holding the prize.

We have recently published an article on the benefits of being a small business player in the search engine optimisation stakes. Small business owners will find valuable tips and insights into the nuances of small business web site seo. Check out the tips and examples we present, and see how they can be applied to your business- no matter what business you are in.