Digital Marketing Tactic - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Our recommendations on SEO best practice
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is arguably THE most cost-effective digital marketing technique, but also the most challenging to get right.
Here is a summary of the most important factors according to SEOMoz taken from our understanding ranking factors article.
Here is a selection of the most useful articles on SEO on Smart Insights followed by a listing of the most recent articles.
The most popular post on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) from Smart Insights:
Whether it’s upgrading hosting, improving your URL structure or simplifying information architecture upgrades to your web presence are inevitable for every company.
As more companies reach the limits of their current web investments, many are worried that significant change will impact their organic listings and SEO performance. I’ve even seen a company maintaining two websites, frightened that merging would reduce their organic rankings, even though it was near impossible for users to find anything.
Whether you are an in-house marketer or an agency specialist, in my experience if you are able to plan ahead and factor in SEO migration tactics to your project you will find a smooth transition. Often the very fact you engage with the search engines can provide improved rankings on the other side.
In this article I look at 5 tactics to help you in the event of a large scale migration or upgrade.
- Benchmark your current performance
- Befriend your search engine
- Cherish your most valuable links
- Limit the impact
- Manage the bounce.
Step 1 – Benchmark your current performance
Sounds obvious but do you know exactly how visible your site is currently? To effectively establish your current … » Read our full article
An introduction to on-page optimisation for SEO
Many of the posts or articles on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that you find on the web today will talk about emerging trends or the latest tools to manage this or analyze that, it can become too easy to lose sight of the core building blocks that help shape a successful online business.
Working closely with Dr. Dave Chaffey, we have created the first of many ‘back to basics’ guides that we hope will help companies who lack outside or internal expertise review their own digital marketing effectiveness – a DIY approach.
You can download the on-page SEO template at the end of this post.
We hope that anyone who writes or reviews copy who isn’t an SEO expert will find the guidelines and examples useful.
What is on-page optimisation?
On-page optimization is an essential tool in your natural search-marketing toolbox. Each page of your website is an asset you can use to help your business rank higher in the search engines. On-page optimisation often involves applying a simple set of guidelines to ensure every page on your website is working … » Read our full article
I was recently putting the digital world to rights with digital marketing consultant James Gurd (James on Linked In, James on Twitter). We were talking about the ongoing need for straightforward advice on SEO for small and medium businesses who are new to SEO. We both felt there is still too much complexity and too many myths. James finds that when talking to clients that many still want to get to grips with SEO essentials so they can can focus their investment working with their SEO agency on advanced strategy.
So I’m delighted that James has offered to share his approach to cutting through the complexity – I hope it provides useful frameworks and interesting reading for marketers grappling with the basic success factors for SEO and also for consultants and agencies grappling with explaining it.
Key SEO strategy areas
Question 1: What are the components of site optimisation?
It’s essential to understand what influences your website’s visibility in search engine results. Search engine algorithms update frequently and strive to provide the best customer experience, so the demands on website owners to match this aspiration has increased accordingly.
Site optimisation is more than pure … » Read our full article
Question: Our company is planning to out-source our SEO. We have lots of companies pitching, what are the major things we should be looking for from these agencies before we hire one?
Answer: You will hear many similar promises or processes from SEO agencies so it can be difficult to tell them apart. Based on several SEO pitches I have run for clients and reviewing a lot of proposals talking to a lot of clients on SEO courses, here are 7 important questions that I would advise asking – it’s vital that you do all you can to find the best fit possible!
- Exactly how will they improve our results? Some SEOs may be unwilling to disclose techniques, but ethical techniques are well understood and documented and so an open relationship about SEO methods is essential. It will aid internal learning as well as ensure that you integrate better. Take an example product or group of keyphrases you will target for SEO and ask the agencies to audit the current performance against competitors and the process and techniques they will deploy to improve SEO. Beware of companies that focus just on the on-page
… » Read our full article
Like many I’ve switched to Chrome as my main browser this year for the speed and stability.
If you haven’t made the switch yet, there’s almost nothing to stop you now although I’m still missing the SEO Book plug-ins for Firefox, although SEO Quake is an adequate competitor.
I’ve found great interest in these new tools on my Advanced SEO course, so “due to popular demand” I’ve created a page of the ones I recommend. I’ve started with the simplest ones which marketers on the course might use, onto the more advanced ones for the SEOs.
1. PageRank Status
A simple tool for showing Google PageRank.
You probably don’t need this one if you have some of the other tools like SEO Quake.
Chris developed the excellent developer toolbar for Firefox. The main value of this for SEO is checking for semantic markup of <h1>,<h2>,<h3> – through reviewing many site I find that developers love to plaster containers in sidebars with <Hx> failing to highlight the content that matters to
… » Read our full article
