Online Marketing
Is there such a thing as a free lunch?
Feb 8th
Many people believe that nothing comes for free and there is always a catch, but there may be an exception to the rule. The art of SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation has been around for many years, but most companies have been reluctant to reveal their techniques for successfully optimising a website for search engine results pages. However some SEO companies are seeing this as an opportunity to help educate people and help them to understand the processes and techniques behind website optimisation. But is there such a thing as Free SEO tips? Well Digital Surf are offering free advice on their blog to get you started, but if you need any additional assistance getting your website to the top of the search engines then their team is on hand with a wide range of services to help you.
Digital Surf
Jan 20th
If you are a small company looking to compete with the big corporations online then you may need some assistance to get your website to the top of the search engine results pages. Digital Surf are a online marketing consultancy that specialise in helping SME’s to achieve their online potential. Their services start with a free analysis of your website, think of it as a health check for your website. From this they will be able to understand what SEO work will need to be done to ensure you are ranking well for your products and services. The search engine optimisation process involves on site and off site work to help drive your website to the top of Google.
Small Business SEO
Dec 15th
Competition for first page results status on leading search engines such as; Google, Yahoo and Bing is becoming more fierce. With hundreds and in some cases thousands of companies vying for the top spot, how will you ensure your businesses website is on the top of the pile?
Search Engine Optimitsation or SEO as it is referred to, is the process which web developers and web marketing companies employ to help companies get to the front page of a search engine result for specific words or phrases. To ‘optimise’ a website for great search engine results requires work to the website and work off-site to help the search engines rank the chosen pages in order of their relevancy and popularity for the specified keywords, or phrases.
Search engines decide the most relevant site for the searched term depending on the structure and content of the website and subsequent pages on the website. The pages should be written and constructed in a way that allows the search engines to ‘crawl’ the site and find the information required. It will analyse ever aspect of the page including; the title, content, images and links to ascertain it’s relevancy in relation to the searched item.
Once the website pages have been crawled, the search engines will also look at the links that come to that page from other web sources. The importance and relevancy of these links to the page will help to determine its final standing in the search engines results.
For small and medium sized companies, a successful small business SEO campaign is a cost effective way of reaching a wider audience of potential customers.
Do I need a social media marketing strategy for my company?
Sep 27th
Every company that has a website should be looking to maximize its online presence by using Search Engine Optimisation techniques. The first stages of this would be onsite SEO, which would include keyword and Meta data research and selection, alt tags for images and good page text content. Once the onsite work is complete the next stage would be to start link building from various websites, directories and blogs.
Initially, links can be relatively easy to source, however free sites for links will soon dry up when you have gone through all the local and industry specific directories and you have requested links from clients and friends. You may find that to get good quality, high page ranking text links to your site, you will have to employ a SEO or link building company. This will enable you to obtain a wide variety of web links to your website which would be difficult for you to source on your own.
Another way that you can help build links from a variety of sources would be to implement your own Media Marketing Strategy. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Linkedin can all help with your brand marketing and can also provide a useful resource for you to post links to your website. This could be something as simple as getting all your employees to ensure that their Linkedin public profile has the company website on it. At the other end of the spectrum you may wish to embark on a full blown social marketing campaign involving regular blog posts, image posting on flickr, daily tweets and facebook groups.
Why do I need SEO?
Sep 22nd
If your company has any kind of online presence and wishes to generate more revenue then you should employ some kind of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy. By applying some basic techniques and following a list of steps you can greatly improve the chance of your website getting ranked highly for search engine results.
The first place to start is by finding a company that specialises in SEO, be careful when selecting a company to manage your online marketing and beware of companies that promise page 1 rankings in a matter of weeks and huge monthly fees for thousands of external links.
What you are looking for is somewhere in the middle. SEO is a combination of specialist knowledge about how search engines work, market research about which keywords you should be optimising your site for and hard work! To optimise your site sell and to get lasting susses will take time and commitment on both sides, however once your site is ranked on the first page of a search engine the results will speak for themselves.
On average you should expect to commit for an initial 12 month period with an online marketing company, during this time there would be a combination on improving and optimising your website for specific words and phrases relevant to your products or services, and offsite optimisation including; directory links, images, videos, social networking and specific text links from relevant websites.
The cost for these services will vary, from as little as £100 per month for a few external links to £1000 per month for professional keyword copy writing for your website, article writing, blog postings, social networking and high page value external links. Your budget will obviously be determined by your financial position, however somewhere in the middle of this range, around £500-£600 would be a realistic price to pay for a good service and will show good results in the first year.
Internet Marketing
Sep 20th
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from a search engine query, such as; Google, Bing, Yahoo via natural search results. On the whole, the higher a website appears in a search results, the more people will see the website and the more visitors it will receive. SEO involves optimising a website to ensure that it appears in different kinds of search results, including; search engine, image search, local search, and industry-specific search engines.
An Internet marketing strategy will include some degree of Search Engine Optimisation. SEO analyses how search engines work and what words people search for. The process of optimising a website for specific words or phrases involves a combination of onsite work including analysing keywords, tags, titles, headings and keyword rich content. Off-site work can also benefit the websites visibility and assist with the optimisation; this can include social media profile, link building and bloging.