SEO on zero budget
Mark Bonnett, e-Business consultant at the National B2B Centre, examines how four small businesses have implemented effective search engine optimisation (SEO) without spending any money.
James Pennington presented at the Search Engine Strategies one-day forum at A4U Expo, the affiliate marketing conference and exhibition on 26 October. James talked to 130 people about how companies from the West Midlands have implemented basic search engine optimisation at zero cost, to gain new business from all over the world.
The talk focused on four case studies:
- DAW Consulting (www.dawconsulting.co.uk)
- Adaptawear (www.adaptawear.co.uk)
- Perilla (www.perilla.co.uk)
- Pizzazz (www.pizzazz-retail.co.uk)
All four companies have done the following to their websites, in their own time, without spending any money.
Optimised page titles for every page on the website
Each page should have a unique title and be focused on the particular page. The page title is what appears in the top of the web browser not in your actual website. The search engines spiders pay attention to the words used in the page title and use the this title in their search results. To have a look at your page titles in Google is to type "site:www.yourdomainname.co.uk", the blue underlined text is your page titles.
There are approximately up to 100 characters to use in the page title and Google will displays 60 characters in its search results. If you don't know what to put as your page title a good structure to follow is:
Company name service/product benefit location
Created good quality content and updated content on a regular basis
Good, well written regular content that includes your key phrases will get picked up by the search engines and included in their search results. This content could be in the from of latest news from your company, articles about the area of work you are in or simple top 10 lists about your specialties.
Created a link strategy
This is where each company has actively looked for relevant websites that could link back to their websites. The search engines see each incoming link to your website as a vote or a recommendation for your website.
By setting out to get three or four incoming links a month, has boosted the online visibility of each website, increased the ranking the sites get and increased the amount of traffic which has lead to new business. Keep track of your web stats using Google Analytics and you'll be able to see where people are coming from and if any incoming links are driving traffic.
Don't buy or sell any links without consulting Google's code of conduct. If you do this you run the risk of being penalised by Google. Recently a well respected business blog has gone from a Google page rank of six to a rank of three because the owner had been selling links and ignoring Google's guidelines.
The optimisation has resulted in:
- Improved organic rankings for targeted keywords
The companies have seen the key phrases that they have targeted now bring in the top 10 of search results; in some cases they've got the number 1 spot for their chosen term. - New business from all over the UK and abroad
The companies have gained new businesses from all over the UK thanks to their improved ranking. In some cases the new business has come from a far away as the USA and Malta. This business would never have happened if they'd not optimised their website. - Increased traffic and ability to react to customers
Improved rankings have seen more and more traffic come to their websites. By using Google Analytics to track the visitors to their sites, they can react to the information and adapt their websites accordingly. For example, if the web stats are showing that 80% of people are leaving the website on the About Us page, there is something wrong with the content that needs changing. - Greater presence of their company on the internet
Each of the companies websites can now be found more easily, whether it's from search engines or through other websites. Thanks to the linking strategies, there is now a greater chance of someone finding one of the company's website.
For more information on the National B2B Centre please click here.
Post a comment
AccountingWEB.co.uk - 4-Dec-2007
Categories: e-Business
Story read: 9861
Number of comments: 10
DAW Consulting Website
David Willetts, 08 December 2007 @ 09:30 AM
As the owner of the DAW Consulting website I would comment that the use of open source software has allowed me to gain some knowledge on how websites are created and on using SEO to attract visitors to the site.
I am no 'techie' so the challenge for me is to meet on-going changes/improvements demanded by the likes of Google, whilst at the same time exercising adequate control over the site.
The help offered by NB2BC to the SME business owner in addressing developments in the IT world is most valued and the organisation is one I am pleased to be associated with.
Regards
David Willetts
Web: DAW Consulting
Your Virtual Finance Director
Optimised search terms
Mark Lee, 06 December 2007 @ 09:56 AM
Remember to focus on the search terms your target audience will be looking for. Eg: "accountant leeds" as well as "Magic Accountants Ltd".
It's not hard to get close to the top of the Google search results for the unique name of your business and some people will indeed use that facility to find your website. But the majority of your target audience may well be people who have never come across the name of your firm before.
Mark Lee
www.TaxAdviceNetwork.co.uk
(ps: Just noticed that Leo makes a similar point below)
Paid links
Dan Martin, 05 December 2007 @ 17:31 PM
The story Google declares war on paid links may be of interest.
Dan Martin
Editor, BusinessZone
Oops! Speed-reading failure!
Nigel Hopkins, 05 December 2007 @ 17:01 PM
Thanks Leo,
Nigel
Steven
Leo Ludwig, 05 December 2007 @ 16:13 PM
Hi Steven,
Google usually 'penalise' pages / sites that break their rules with a grey bar not PR0 (white bar).
Google also tend to identify a pattern in sites that cause problem and modify their algorithm to try and catch all of them at once - and you sometimes get collateral damage.
Their latest spree against paid links is against paid links to gain PageRank. I think that many sites that were penalised advertised a 'buy a link from our PR7 page' or 'buy a post from our PR6 blog' or something similar. Off course as I said before you sometimes get collateral damage and other that did not sell links were penalised as well.
Leo
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Accountant Websmiths
Pagerank penalties
Steven Tucker, 05 December 2007 @ 15:38 PM
As I understand it, Google's penalty for breaking their rules is a pagerank of zero.
It is possible that the rank was reduced to three on a page that had a link from a page that was penalised, but IMHO, there is a more likely cause:
Pagerank is calculated in a complicated way that is best visualised by imagining pagerank as a fluid, flowing into each page through inbound links and out via outbound links. With good SEO, most of the pagerank that arrives on your site will swill around your own pages, benefiting your own site. Selling links involves creating lots of outbound links, so you will find that your pagerank flows out and the pageranks on your own site fall (and not just on the page where you added the links).
A general rule of thumb is that adding outbound links will cost you pagerank.
Nigel
Leo Ludwig, 05 December 2007 @ 10:58 AM
Hi Nigel,
The author was referring to Google PageRank - Google own patented technology to assess the website 'popularity' - not rank in the search engines result pages.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=google+pagerank
The PageRank is basically a logarithmic scale that goes from 0 to 10. It is a representation of the number of links your website has and the quality (own PageRank) of the pages and sites linking to you.
The following is a good representation of the effort needed to get up the Google PageRank mountain: http://searchengineland.com/070508-152900.php
Kind Regards,
Leo
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Accountant Websmiths
Surely the original was correct...
Nigel Hopkins, 05 December 2007 @ 10:28 AM
"Recently a well respected business blog has gone from a Google page rank of three to a rank of six."
....if they had been selling links then they would be penalised by Google and so would achieve a lower ranking i.e "from three to six" not the other way round.
Google ranking
Dan Martin, 04 December 2007 @ 12:44 PM
"Recently a well respected business blog has gone from a Google page rank of three to a rank of six. Would that be gone from 6 to 3 and not 3 to 6 ;)"
You're right Leo. I have corrected it.
Dan Martin
Editor, BusinessZone
Good introduction
Leo Ludwig, 04 December 2007 @ 12:40 PM
Hi Mark,
Good introduction to SEO and certainly good for SEO on zero budget. I would like to emphasize on the importance of having unique page title tags. This is the single most important element on your web page. However you recommended using:
Company name service/product benefit location
I would recommend using:
Service/product - Location - Company Name
People who don't know about your company, will query search engines using keywords relevant to your products and services, not your company name. Having them at the start, increases their 'weight' in the search engines eye. Use capital letters as well, making them easier to read.
I left out the 'benefit' because as you said, Google only displays 60 characters, 'benefit' are better left to be mentioned in the copy.
I would also add to the create good quality content section. I would advise to structure content logically using h tags (heading tags h1 to h6). Use only one h1 per page and then use h2 and h3 to create blocks of information under sub-headings.
When linking from one page of your site to the another page of your site, never use 'click here'. Always use keywords relevant to the page you are linking to. For more information [link]click here[/link] becomes Find out more about [link]keywords[/link]
Finally on the link building front. I would recommend getting links to the homepage as well as internal pages, and using your company name as well as keywords in those links from other websites to yours. Buying links is only frowned upon when it's used solely to gain better rankings. Buying links to gain traffic, on site with a similar target audience than yours for example, is not.
Recently a well respected business blog has gone from a Google page rank of three to a rank of six ...
Would that be gone from 6 to 3 and not 3 to 6 ;)
Kind Regards,
Leo
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Accountant Websmiths
