Firstly can I thank you all on the feedback on the site I created for Kylie, just wanted to give you free advice on this post and SEO
Kylie I'm just wondering if you're using any internet marketing strategies now that you've got your lovely new website, eg. "pay per click" on Google or other ad services. I'm just not sure whether to invest in this type of "optimisation" on-line and wondered what you're doing. Thanks, hope I'm not being too nosey xx
When you come to SEO (search engine optimsation) there are a few things you need to take into consideration.
Adwords (pay per clicks) If you dont know what adwords are then they are the links on the right hand side of search results in google you pay google every time someone clicks on them as a guesstimate within the nails, tanning, beauty industry you wil be paying approx 5p-10p per click, I have a tool on my computer that lets me know how much and which keywords your competitor is paying/using. It helps so you know what offer to give google to get on page 1.
Adwords can be very useful when you have a new website, but this is the important bit, dont think that because you are paying google you will appear high in the organic listings (organic listings are the search results on the left of the page) Google have made it so the "Adwords" department and "Google Search" do not have contact with each other they even use two different systems, this is to stop unfairness and businesses paying their way to the top.
If you want to optimise your site so it appears in the organic listings their is a checklist that you need to follow.
1-Along with the meta description, Headers are tags that the search engines use to get more of a description of the business and what it does.
2-Never try and hide keywords or have a long list of text at the top or bottom of the page that make no sense to the viewer, if you try to hard and make your pages for the search engines they pick up on this and penalise you. Your pages should be for the viewer not the search engines.
3-Content-Always write content imformative that keeps the user on your pages,and write the content in such away that it has search terms in it, but again dont go mad as you will get penalised.
example never write in the first line "Welcome to my salon" write something along the lines of "Welcome to my company the cheapest tanning salon in London" you see how you have created various search terms now. ie "tanning salon london" "tanning london" "cheap tanning london" google will remember your content and match he words to the search
4-Links, within this industry I know you will all struggle to get the amount of links you need to get you to the top of google alone, dont worry to much as long as your headers and content is good then google will realise this.
NEVER USE "LINK EXCHANGE SITES" GOOGLE DOESNT LIKE THEM.
5-Navigation, try and keep your navigation away from the left side of the page, googlebots will only read so much into your page and if all it sees is links to other pages it wont know to much about your content try and get the content in first and links on the right of the page.
6-Cloaking, cloaking is classed as black hat, where people use back end code to attract the search engines but the viewer will see something completely different. NEVER DO THIS.
7-Online Directories/Social Networks, Open as many accounts as you possible can, set up a facebook page under your business name same with myspace etc etc, the reason for this is if you write your business name in google now and it gives you a figure of how many instances it has of that name, the more the better, it makes it look like your business and website are popular the more your business appears the higher you go. I would also suggest with facebook you send friend invites to everyone in your area who may use your services, write on your wall the web address link occasionally, google will know how many people are clicking into it, and rank you accordingly.
8-Updates-in this industry you would need to update your site every 2-3weeks but make sure you do this, it will help massively with getting high on search engines.
Google index is the most important search engine to be on, if you get kicked off from indexing with google because you have tried some of the black hat tricks, take your website down and start again. You are never going to get anywhere.
If you stick to this advice I know it will help you reach the top and never expect over night success with this it can take 3-6mths to appear at the top of google, and dont worry if you do something and fall down the ranks change it back and try something else. It happens
I have many more ways of how to get you to the top but I dont want to talk myself out of a job.
Hope this helps if you have a website and are struggling with the search engines but it will point you in the right direction.
Oh one more word of advice if you are going to use a SEO comapny and they say over the phone "We work very closely with google" put the phone down they are lying to get your business, google will not share information on how to get to the top with anyone. If "Adwords" and "Google Search" dont share information what chance has an seo company in Northampton got.
