Google’s “Best Guess”
Posted by admin on March, 23rd 2011Google very quietly launched a new little feature in the SERPs recently, the search engine now gives its ‘Best Guess” at any commonly agreed information.
Look at the example below for a Google search on a upcoming computer game called “Duke Nukem Forever”:
Searching the game’s name plus the words “release date” sparks off the new guessing feature, I recommend you give it a try for computer games, movies and albums.
Most upcoming releases don’t yet show in Google’s search results and ones that do are mentioned from only reputable sources such as magazine ... (Read more)
Read moreQuick Meta Guide
Posted by admin on March, 18th 2011Here’s a quick Meta re-cap on what you should be focusing on (and what to ignore) when performing on-site SEO.
Meta Title
This is the most important place to describe what’s on the page. All the search engines take full attention to the title of each page and can display up to 60 characters including spaces. There is no penalty for writing over 60 characters but the title will be dotted out (…) and not all the keywords will count.
Keywords that people will regularly search for should appear in the title, for example on a shopping page for ... (Read more)
Read moreHow Does ‘TRUST’ Effect SEO?
Posted by admin on March, 9th 2011
What is ‘trust’ when it comes to SEO? How can search engines measure trust in terms of data and algorithms?…
Trust is an emotional response making it pretty hard (but not impossible!) for computers to measure.
Web spiders can have a pretty good guess at which websites are deemed “trustworthy” by looking at certain factors. Search engines such as Google always strive to get the best quality search results for any term searched for; trustworthiness is therefore a good factor to measure to weed out websites with shifty practices or ... (Read more)
Read moreGoogle “Farmer” Update – What To Look Out For
Posted by admin on March, 4th 2011
There’s been a lot of big news from Google recently with some deeply impacting changes to their top-secret ranking algorithm. The biggest one for years came out recently which has been dubbed the “farmer” update.
Google update their complex algorithm on an almost daily basis to improve their search results, trying to eliminate spam and bad information. Every now and then a major change comes out which knocks down a significant number of clearly spammy websites; this update on the other hand affected a significant number of established websites such as EzineArticles.com and ... (Read more)
Read moreSEO Goofs
Posted by admin on February, 25th 2011Every now and then we see SEO mistakes from catastrophic errors to minor mishaps; here’s a list of goofs to look out for on your own site…
Robots.txt
The robots.txt file tells search engines which page not to bother crawling on your website (not that all of them will listen to it). Less widely used now it still has the potential to easily block off an entire website to ALL the search engines with just one mis-guided line of code! If you are going to create a robots.txt file then it’s best to steal one off another website that ... (Read more)
Copywriting for SEO
Posted by admin on February, 23rd 2011
Copywriting is the one area of website development that usually gets ignored or passed on yet it’s one of the most important aspects of on-site SEO.
Let’s face it, writing content, descriptions and blogs can be painfully boring. You’d be amazed at the hundreds of website owners I’ve seen that start a website, start promoting it with SEO and then give up totally after 4-5 blog posts on their chosen niche.
Also the rewards of consistent copywriting aren’t instant, it can take a few months before traffic really starts ramping ... (Read more)
Read moreIncreasing Click Through Percentages on SERPs
Posted by admin on February, 15th 2011Your keyword rankings aren’t the only factor that determines how much traffic you’ll gain from search engines; you also need to entice people to your listing in the SERPs.
Every SEO’er should know the importance of having a keyword targeted Meta title tag but what many people miss out is the significance of the Meta description tag as well.
Here’s how your Meta tags fit in with Google listings:
Above I used the Google search for “SEO” to show our homepage. You can see that the keyword “SEO” is highlighted several times ... (Read more)
Read moreCountry House Hotel – Hambleton Hall
Posted by admin on February, 11th 2011We are privileged to work with Hambleton Hall, one of the most prestigious Chateaux Hotels in the UK situated near to Rutland Water in Oakham.
Hambleton Hall is a fine country house hotel with an amazing Michelin star restaurant that has held it’s title for 28 years running. It’s location is surrounded by Rutland Water, a popular water sports location and nature spot near to the centre of England.
Work was previously done to the Hambleton Hall website when it upgraded to a WordPress system. WordPress designs are not only flexible in the way they can appear but they ... (Read more)
Read moreHow Flash elements will harm your conversion rate
Posted by admin on February, 9th 2011Macromedia Flash is a standalone plugin which allows you to view movies, play games and create fancy interactive website elements.
Flash is brilliant for video and gaming sites but it can really harm sales on an ecommerce site where people just want to quickly shop.
The main problem with Flash is that you have to download a plugin in order to view Flash elements. This instantly alienates people who (A) Can’t be bothered or don’t know how to download the Flash plugin, and (B) Cannot install Flash on their mobile or un-common browser.
Every second counts when it comes to ... (Read more)
Read moreDiecast Cars from Diecast Stars
Posted by admin on February, 3rd 2011
We’ve been refining our on-site SEO for Magento ecommerce sites and very quickly results are appearing for one of our latest client’s website: DieCastStars.com.
The website holds over 1000 models of Diecast cars built usually to the scale of 1:18 (that’s 5.5% if you prefer percentages!). All the cars are exact copies of the real thing so you can finally own that Bugatti Veyron you’ve always dreamed of! Some higher end models have incredibly fine details details and even moving parts such as the steering wheel, boot and engine bonnet.
Magento ... (Read more)
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