Alert about new Google Webmaster Tools notification

Value: [rating=5] Our commentary: The use of Adobe Flash has long been a debate between agencies & / or internal teams. On one hand you have the creative team who promise that they can deliver a better designed & more interactive website if they use flash. While on the other hand you have people tasked with growing traffic through natural search which would say "it is impossible to rank with a flash website as Google will ignore it". Both are right... to a point. It has always been difficult to really drive natural search with a pure flash website, the fact there tends to be only one URL (your homepage) link building becomes very difficult as one example. Equally though, up until the last couple of years it was easier to create better designed and more interactive websites in flash. You end up in a place…

Google Issue New SEO Starter Guide

Value: [rating=5] Our commentary: In the past some people would have likely killed to get some insights about Google, from Google. Over the years and especially in 2010 Google has started to engage with its market / audience making it easier for webmasters, online marketers and the likes to be kept up-to-date (blogs) find information easily and ask questions to "experts". Google have recently launched their updated starter guide to SEO covering everything from structuring your website through to promoting & analysing. Marketing implications: As with all starter guides there is a tendency if you already work in the industry to gloss over it or assume you already know it. Personally, I think this is always the wrong move but especially so when Google of all people issue such a guide. Whatever stage you are at with your SEO skills, whether its launching your very first website or…

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…

Question. So, we know title tags and alt attributes are good to have for keyword density etc ... but are they as good as body text? Is it still better for SEO to provide some actual body text that uses the words - and include image based keywords as well? Any thoughts ... ? Answer. Success in SEO is down to knowing the ranking factors that matter most to the search engines and then implementing in a way that the site is still usable for human audiences "€“ we need to avoid SEOO "€“ search engine over-optimization. Of the factors you mention, their order of importance is <title> tag (keep them them focused on 2 or 3 keyphrases only); then body copy (particularly towards the top of the document), then image tag alt attributes (these are most important when it is an image that links elsewhere). For the other on-page factors, I would…

I have finally made time to read the Google Starter Guide to SEO PDF which was published in November. This is a summary of the recommendations. I had a quick check back in November to see whether it added to conventional wisdom on best practice, i.e. what any competent SEO would advise. On a second, detailed reading, it doesn't add anything to standard best practice, but its value is in educating non-SEO specialists through it's summary of the main issues and nice use of examples. It also helps validate your advice, so make relevant sure content owners and designers take a look. If you haven't had a chance to read ityet, I can save you time - these are the main issues addressed.

Summary of Google-recommended SEO practices

Some of the important points from the Google Starter Guide which we find are often neglected by designers or content owners are: 1.…