WEB SEO

What is SEO?

Search engine optimisation or SEO refers to the process of improving the position that your website appears at in the “organic” search results returned by sites such as Google.

As a rule of thumb, sites that appear higher up in the results will get more traffic to their pages, and so potentially more business. Your goal is to get to page one and ideally to position one, but whether that is feasible largely depends on the market that you are operating in. If you’re in the mobile phone space or travel, you’ll be fighting a losing battle unless you’ve got a sizeable budget to spend. However, if you’re offering a niche product or a service in a defined geographical area, you stand a pretty good chance of at least getting to page one if you are patient and follow these basic principles.

Keyword rich content

One of the key tools that search providers such as Google and Microsoft (Bing) employ to determine your rankings are “spiders”. A spider is a piece of software that crawls the web in a methodical, automated manner. They browse your website (and everyone else’s) to identify the actual copy written on the page along with things like use of key words and phrases. This data is then used to determine the relevance of your site when someone enters a keyword or phrase into Google, Bing or any other search engine.

You need to consider the search habits of your target audience and ensure that the terms they might use to find your business are reflected on your pages. For example, if you offer physiotherapy services, your website content should include words or phrases that people may search for, such as “massage”, or specific problems such as “lower back pain”. Remember that text included in images cannot be crawled by spiders, although alternative text associated with the images is, so you may wish to revisit the design of some of your pages.

A useful free tool for identifying your keywords is the AdWords keyword tool. This is designed to help prospective advertisers identify the most relevant keywords for their chosen market, but it is also very helpful when writing copy for your website. Once you have identified your keywords, ensure that they appear in the body of your pages, as well as in the metadata of your page, which is the unseen data that gives the spiders key information about your page. This can either be done by yourself, with a little knowledge of HTML and access to your server, or it can be done by your web designer.

Keep it fresh

The rate at which search engine spiders crawl your site is in part determined by how frequently the content of your pages change. You may want to create a monthly task to change text, images, or add or remove pages, to ensure that your content is regularly updated. Alternatively, set up a blog on your site and allocate time each day (or week) to write or curate some content that is relevant to your target market. This might seem onerous or daunting, but once you get into the habit it becomes second nature and shouldn’t take more than about half an hour a day. For reference material – which should always be credited – use Google Alerts to keep up to date with online content that matches your keywords.

Keeping up to date with SEO

The algorithms used by Google and Microsoft to determine the order of their results are subject to tweaks and improvements as they attempt to deliver ever more accurate search results. As a result, SEO is something of a moving feast and it pays to stay up to date. That said, these basic principles are unlikely to change significantly as they are key determinants of your ranking.

Google Search Engine Optimization

What is SEO? 

SEO refers to search engine optimization, or the process of optimizing a website to make it easy to find via search engines like Google.

So how do you optimize your site content for Google SEO? Fast Forward Marketing leads the way!

Google SEO Basics: Keyword Research

Ideally, it’s best to do your keyword research before you start writing content. This lets you know which keywords to focus on in your content. It’s best to use a mixture of broad and long-tail keywords.

Google SEO: On-Page Optimization

After you complete your Google SEO keyword research and have a list of Google SEO keywords you want to target, it’s time to write! Your SEO keywords need to appear in your content – just don’t overdo it or your content will look spammy.

Place your most valuable keywords in:

• Body of the text. No brainer, right? Remember not to just use the same keywords over and over again. Add in modifiers (ex. “best”, “top”) and long-tails.
• Title. Having the keyword in your title will improve your CTR from the SERP. (See our title tag guide for more help with writing SEO-friendly titles.)
• Subheads. Subheadings/H2 headings are valuable spots for Google SEO keywords.

Your work is not over yet! Don’t forget to add Google SEO keywords into the:

• Meta title: The Meta title appears in search engine results. Use some solid keyword here.
• Meta description: This description appears below your link in Google. Write an engaging Meta description that includes relevant keywords to boost your click-through rate.
• Image file names/ALT attributes: First, include pictures in your Google SEO content! Pictures are attractive and appealing for readers, and Google also likes them. Use the keyword in the file names (e.g., how-to-catch-fish.jpg). Also use the ALT attribute to tell search engines and users what the picture is with a keyword.
• Anchor text: Link to your new page from several other pages on your site, using your keyword as the anchor text. This makes it easy for Google crawlers to find and rank your page.

Google Optimize

Google Optimize is an online split-testing tool from Google that plugs into your website and enables you to experiment with different ways of delivering your content. It facilitates three types of testing – A/B testing, multivariate testing, and redirect tests. Optimize is typically used for conversion rate optimization (CRO).

How does Google Optimize work?

There are two key elements to Google Optimize:

• An Editor, which lets you create altered versions of your pages, to test different HTML content options against one another (e.g. in Version A, the web page shows a green CTA button; in Version B, the same button is yellow). The Editor works with a range of device type views, including mobile.
• A Reporting suite, which uses data from your linked Google Analytics account to provide insight into the experiments you set up using the Editor. The Editor is where you can see, for example, whether Version A or Version B got the best click-through rate.

The Editor and Reporting suite are used together to setup and analyse experiments into what works best on your web page.

How to get Google Optimize

There’s also an enterprise version of the tool – Google Optimize 360 – which carries a subscription fee. However, we recommend sticking to the free version while you’re getting started. Optimize is currently available in 37 languages, which makes it an ideal choice if you’re collaborating on your CRO experiments with colleagues around the world.

Digital Marketing Specialist

Traditional advertising is no longer as effective as it used to be. Companies must now provide meaningful content to consumers and allow themselves to be found quickly and easily online. A digital marketing specialist is someone who works alongside a company’s marketing team to identify a target market, create a brand image, and create and maintain a marketing campaign for the internet and for digital technologies. Marketing specialists can choose to specialize in certain areas, such as search engine optimization (SEO), paid search (PPC), display media, social media and shopping feeds. Additionally, they can have a more general digital marketing expertise and can still be referred to as a digital marketing specialist.

What does a Digital Marketing Specialist do?

The digital marketing specialist role has similar objectives and goals as a marketing professional – to increase brand awareness, promote company products or services and to drive prospects to conversions. Unlike using the more traditional marketing channels, digital marketers effectively communicate through appropriate technology platforms. Digital marketing specialists work to initiate effective marketing campaigns online, and to translate business goals into successful marketing campaigns. They are adept at evaluating the needs of the consumer market, and will understand how and where to acquire knowledge about consumer trends and demands. Digital marketing specialists are responsible for developing the strategy used in marketing a company’s product online. This is done by putting together various online promotions and e-mailing campaigns to get their company’s message out, and by performing consumer research to discover other ways of reaching customers by way of the Internet.

Black Hat SEO

What Is Black Hat SEO?

Black hat SEO refers to a set of practices that are used to increase a site or page’s rank in search engines through means that violate the search engines’ terms of service. The term “black hat” originated in Western movies to distinguish the “bad guys” from the “good guys,” who wore white hats (see white hat SEO. Recently, it’s used more commonly to describe computer hackers, virus creators, and those who perform unethical actions with computers. Black Hat SEO is most commonly defined as a disapproved practice that nevertheless could increase a page’s ranking in a search engine result page (SERP). These practices are against the search engine’s terms of service and can result in the site being banned from the search engine and affiliate sites. A list of tactics and strategies employed by black hat SEO practitioners have been openly denounced on Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Ask yourself:

“Is the work that I’m doing adding value to the user or am I just doing this for search engines to see?” is a litmus test on whether an SEO tactic would go against a search engine’s webmaster guideline. If no value is added to the user, but rankings are likely to increase, then your decisions are highly likely to be black hat. The same test can be applied to paid search practices to determine whether an activity is considered black hat PPC.

How to Report Black Hat SEO:

There are two reasons why you may report black hat SEO. Either your website has been attacked through a malicious hack, virus or negative SEO campaign of spammy links, or you see spammy web results on a competitive keyword your website is ranking on. For the latter, you may file a web spam report through Google Webmaster Tools. Please use this tool with discretion. SPAM does not stand for search positions above mine! Falsely reporting web spam could be considered black hat SEO.

In the event that your website has been attacked through a malicious hack, virus, or malware, request for a malware review after you’ve removed the malicious code. If your website is the target of a negative SEO campaign of spammy links, use the Disavow Links Tool in Google Webmaster Tools after you’ve tried to contact webmasters whom are pointing these links to your website to have them removed.

Why Should You Avoid Black Hat SEO? 

Black Hat SEO tactics can get your website banned from Google and other search engines. Though there may be some short-term success through increased traffic to your site, Google penalties are getting more and more sophisticated and can have devastating effects on your rankings and traffic. With hundreds of millions of users searching on Google per day, can you really afford to be de-indexed?

Are Black Hat SEO Techniques for You?

It depends: Are you trying to build a long-lasting business? If your answer is yes, you should avoid Black Hat SEO at all costs. Rather, you should look for alternative means of improving your search engine rankings.

What is SEO Marketing?

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.

Search engine marketing uses at least five methods and metrics to optimize websites.

Keyword research and analysis involves three “steps”: ensuring the site can be indexed in the search engines, finding the most relevant and popular keywords for the site and its products, and using those keywords on the site in a way that will generate and convert traffic. A follow-on effect of keyword analysis and research is the search perception impact. Search perception impact describes the identified impact of a brand’s search results on consumer perception, including title and Meta tags, site indexing, and keyword focus. As online searching is often the first step for potential customers, the search perception impact shapes the brand impression for each individual.

Website saturation and popularity, or how much presence a website has on search engines, can be analysed through the number of pages of the site that are indexed by search engines (saturation) and how many backlinks the site has (popularity). It requires pages to contain keywords people are looking for and ensure that they rank high enough in search engine rankings. Most search engines include some form of link popularity in their ranking algorithms. The following are major tools measuring various aspects of saturation and link popularity: Link Popularity, Top 10 Google Analysis, and Market leap’s Link Popularity and Search Engine Saturation.

Back end tools, including Web analytic tools and HTML validators, provide data on a website and its visitors and allow the success of a website to be measured. They range from simple traffic counters to tools that work with log files and to more sophisticated tools that are based on page tagging (putting JavaScript or an image on a page to track actions). These tools can deliver conversion-related information. There are three major tools used by EBSCO: (a) log file analysing tool: Web Trends by NetIQ; (b) tag-based analytic tool: WebSideStory’s Hitbox; and (c) transaction-based tool: Tealeaf RealiTea. Validators check the invisible parts of websites, highlighting potential problems and many usability issues and ensuring websites meet W3C code standards. Try to use more than one HTML validator or spider simulator because each one tests, highlights, and reports on slightly different aspects of your website.

Whois tools reveal the owners of various websites and can provide valuable information relating to copyright and trademark issues.

Google Mobile-Friendly Website Checker: This test will analyze a URL and report if the page has a mobile-friendly design.

Search engine marketing is a way to create and edit a website which can be relative to the search engines than other pages. It should be also focused on keyword marketing or pay-per-click advertising (PPC). The technology enables advertisers to bid on specific keywords or phrases and ensures ads appear with the results of search engines.

Website Optimization

What is Website Optimization?

Search engine optimization (SEO), or website optimization, is the process of making changes to your website so that it will appear higher in search engine results pages (SERPS). Based on a number of factors, search engines evaluate your website’s relevance and readability before assigning it a position or ranking on the search engine results page. The more relevance the search engines determine your website has for a given search, the higher the website will rank. When you consider that more than 60% of Internet users will not look beyond the first page of search results, it’s important to use search engine optimization to push your ranking as high as possible. SEO services for website optimization address a variety of factors, including: keyword selection, adding and refreshing content, creating search-engine friendly design, building links, and resolving technical issues that may drive search engines away.

How Can Website Optimization Help My Online Business?

When your website isn’t found by search engines, business is lost. Professional SEO services can help you increase your site’s relevance and, in turn, move it higher in the rankings – putting your products and services closer to potential customers. With its ability to generate more quality traffic to your website at a relatively low cost, search engine optimization is an essential part of your online marketing strategy. Search engine visibility can also be achieved through using automated search engine submission tools, which can regularly submit your website address to national and local search engines and directories. Using these tools in conjunction with website optimization can dramatically impact the amount of traffic to your site.

How Can Fast Forward Marketing Help Me with SEO Services?

The professional SEO services that Fast Forward Marketing offers will help search engines find your website and rank it high in the search results, where potential customers are more likely to find you. We know that website optimization needs vary between businesses, and that’s why we offer different search engine optimization packages that can help you be found in major search engines.

SEO Tips

To optimize your whole site for search engines, you’ll need to follow these basic tips:

1. Make the website about one thing.

It can be about other stuff, too, but choose one primary topic that is most essential to your message. This step is important, so you may want to do a little keyword research before choosing a topic.

2. Mention keywords where they matter most.

Include your “one thing” in the site title, domain name, description, tagline, keywords, blog categories, page titles, and page content. If you’re on WordPress, you can change a lot of this in the General Settings or through a plugin like All in One SEOPack (which I use).

3. Link to internal pages on your site.

A lot of content management systems automatically do this, but if yours doesn’t, you’ll want to be intentional about linking to your most important pages directly from your homepage and cross-linking them with each other.

4. Use a permalink structure that includes keywords.

Some sites have “ugly” permalink structures that use numbers to identify pages Don’t do this. It’s bad for SEO and just doesn’t look good. Use a URL structure that includes text, and make sure you include keywords in your URLs. So instead of having a page’s URL be this: https://yoursite.com/?p=12. It should look more like this: https://yoursite.com/coolpage/

5. Remove anything that slows down your website.

Page load times are important, so get rid of any non-essentials that bog down your website. These may including music players, large images, flash graphics, and unnecessary plugins.

6. Use keywords in your images.

Include words that reflect your site topic in the image title, description, and alt attributes. Also, re-title the file name if it doesn’t reflect your main keywords (e.g. writing-tips.jpg instead of d1234.jpg).

7. Link to other websites with relevant content.

You can do this by including a blogroll, link list, or resources page on your website. Of course, do it sparingly, as each outbound link is a “vote” for another site. However, if you do it well and people click your links, this tells search engines you are a trusted authority on your particular topic.

8. Update your website frequently.

Sites with dynamic content often rank higher than those with static content. That’s why blogs and directories (like Wikipedia) do so well on search engines. They are constantly being updated with new content.

9. Make sure your website is indexed in search engines.

A lot of search engines will automatically find and index your content, but don’t count on it. You want to be sure engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are crawling your site, so that people are finding you online. (You can add them directly, if they’re not.)

10. Have other websites link to you.

This is really, really important, when it comes to SEO. The bummer is that it’s not something you can necessarily control. Other than creating excellent content, the only thing you can do is ask (which occasionally works). My counsel is to spend the time you would trying to convince somebody to link to you on just writing great content. And, start guest posting on other blogs. Regardless of what you do, know that inbound links are essential to SEO.