Search Engine Optimisation » bing

Mobile SEO in 5 Easy Steps

Andy Kinsey — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:34:39 +0000

The pace of innovation over the past decade or so has been amazing. Do you recall 1999? Sure you do, when Google didn’t rule the world and Lycos or Altavista was the search engine of choice? Think of the mobile phone you had, did you even have one? If you did no doubt it was just about able to take a call every few hours without the battery dieing or without signal dropping. Today we live in a world of slim phones, that are (almost) always connected to the network, we can text, speak, take video calls, and (importantly for this post) access the internet.

In the past few years alone the Mobile web has grown so much that for many sites the amount of traffic they receive from mobile is over 10% (for seoandy this is about 15%). This growth looks set to continue as tablet computers (finally) take off and become common place.

With this in mind, you will no doubt understand why SEO for the Mobile Web is important. So lets take a look at 5 steps to getting started with Mobile SEO. There are many many ways to invest in your future on a mobile platform, below are my tips to give you a solid grounding in Mobile SEO – these are the basics, you should build on them.

Get Started with Mobile SEO

Who Are Your Audience?
SEO is all about knowing your audience, knowing who they are and what they want from your site. Mobile SEO is even more so about this, you have to know them well enough to know what they want to see first and how best to get visitors to perform an action. In essence prioritize your content on a page for your audience, if you are a shop users may want to see an image or the features of a product first and not the price…
Try different layouts using A/B Testing to see which works best for you.
Don’t Forget Your Basic SEO Techniques
As always Basic SEO will give longevity to your optimisation. Getting the basics correct should always be your priority when making changes to your website. If you ignore the basics rankings both mobile and web will lower over time and not increase over time. So, now KISS ME STUPID!
Be The Mobile Bot!
Sounds a bit like soul searching but it’s not. When search engines index your website they will do it using a “bot” one for web, one for images and one for mobile (in Google’s case). If you login to Google Webmaster Tools you will find you can load a certain page using each bot. Therefore you can see what Google will see and optimise for that bot. Have a play and make the bot work for you, not hinder you.
Don’t Forget I Need A KISS!
Keep It Simple Stupid – basically strip any content from a mobile web page that you can. If you have a menu the size of the amazon river forget it, take your main links and have them display. If you’ve great chunks of text split it into pages. In essence keep it simple and don’t put too much on a single mobile web page. This will also be nicer for your visitors because the page will load a little faster.
Set Mobile Specific Goals
Mobile is not “the web” and it is not an “app”. It is important to treat mobile, as it is, as a separate channel. Set targets for your mobile users, it maybe that you want mobile customers to call you (as they are on a phone) or to visit your store (linking to a Google map maybe) … It could also be to buy something, this is a much harder experience to achieve on a mobile so consider instead having a “send this to email” form, so that someone can buy it when they are next on a computer. Other targets are metrics from analytics, pages visited, time on site, top landing pages, are all great targets you can set and achieve.

If you follow these 5 easy steps to Mobile SEO success you will be onto a winner. Don’t forget though that the bed rock of all of these tips is Simple SEO, don’t overcomplicate things – think logically and you will win.

18 Trends Which Will Change SEO in 2012

Andy Kinsey — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:27:38 +0000

Search Engine Optimisation is a fickle business, I hear moans all the time from “seo experts” and website owners that Google did this and Bing did that and subsequently they have no visitors … oh this is the hardest year ever to be an SEO … etc.

Whilst not denying this year and the previous few years have been challenging for our industry I do wonder if these people expected an easy ride to high rankings … or if more likely, they had no idea what was going to happen.

This post is about just that, predicting what will have and what to expect over the next 6 to 12 months. Both in terms of SEO, Social Media and other wise, this post is about what I think will change / occur over this period. At the end, let me know what you think of my list of trends for SEO in 2012.

Trends of SEO in 2012

Humans Make Search Rankings – in 2012 a lot of people will be upset at the end of an era of link buying, swapping and baiting. Search Engines will look more and more to humans for ranking, both in the short and long terms – this means both social media and using more human relevancy quality testers (aka someone decides which category a page belongs to or if it’s spam). Google is already using such factors for more “real-time” search, this is the short term aspect to some extent, so expect to see links with long term longevity on social networks rank higher and web page links plus pagerank matter less and less.
Authority in the Hands of the People!.

Quality NOT Quantity – almost all search engines have been known to at some point use quantity of pages to mean the quality is high. Most now do not, and with Google Panda 2 even more focus is on the quality and freshness of the content. This matches in with point one of social longevity being the key, as it means the quality must be pretty good.

SEO’s are no longer just SEO’s! – this is a prediction I made in conversation last year, and I was right, 2011 did see the expansion of what it meant to be an SEO engineer. 2012 will see a different transformation, though along the same lines. In 2012 SEO’s will become more SMO’s (social media optimisers), with a broader focus not just on the on-page factors of SEO but also the off-site marketing with social integration at it’s heart.

SEO’s will realise CRO’s are better – those optimising for traffic will be upset when they get the firing from customers because for all the traffic they can drive they don’t get conversions. Conversions in 2012 will be more important, if traffic doesn’t convert you won’t get paid as an SEO … so become a CRO (conversion rate optimiser) and keep your clients happy – don’t just drive traffic, drive conversions.

Even More Confusion! – 2011 saw lots of great SEO’s crawl around on their knees picking up the pieces in confusion. Lots of this year’s search updates (especially by Google) have stumped a fair few SEO’s – this is where their claim it has been the hardest year yet for SEO’s has come from. Well the bad news is, for those confused at least, it is only going to get worse for you in 2012. With Google now holding keys to a great social network you can expect more undercover changes in rankings and more personalisation of search, making the job of the “old style seo” much harder. Sorry you guys, get with the times.

Speech Search will be Normalised – with the iPhone now having Siri and Google long having it’s own system (which incidentally I believe is far superior if they would only leverage the power of it) searching using voice will become everyday. No longer will you get an odd look for saying “Search Cats Homes” randomly to your phone. I also foresee a better QR tagging system coming along, and I don’t mean Microsoft Tag! I mean something a little more intuitive and easier to use … maybe it will be nicer barcodes or maybe something else, rumours are many so watch out for that.

Mobile Search will be Huge! – whether it’s through talking to your phone, using social networks or tapping a search into your phone, in 2012 you can expect a huge expansion in the mobile search market. No longer is digital marketing for those who have a computer or tablet … mobile search is here to stay and this will likely get to be the biggest search medium in 2012 (I believe).

It’s not yet Telepathy but it’s close – As both Bing and Google grow further in 2012, their links with social networks (google having its own and bing having large facebook integration) along with search histories, social profiles linked to a signed in user etc you can expect search to become much more personalised. By the end of the year I’d expect to see a lot more people worrying about personal privacy, but more website owners concerned with the fact they can’t be found on social networks … these websites will drop like stones as search becomes more personalised and timely.

Trends of Social Media in 2012

Facebook continues to push but falters – in 2012 you can expect to see more privacy issues around Facebook and what it is doing. You can expect facebook to feel more like a gated community with more people having less friends, rather than the previous attitude of more friends is better. You can also expect people to have dual profiles if they are “personalities” or in essence are a business. (see Leo Laporte as a great example of a public and non-public profile. If you are interested in this kind of thing I recommend reading Public Parts, a book by Jeff Jarvis which is about living life in public and how to do it.) But because Facebook continues to push and has more issues, plus the growth of other social networks it will falter and on top of loosing 6m users in the US in 2011 it will see 2 or 3 times this in 2012. Oh and this subscribe to follow thing they have will become a part of history.

Google+ will stay small – as a Google fanboy it hurts me to say that although not another complete failure by Google, Google+ will stay pretty small … it will grow yes but I would suggest to a maximum of 2% of the social networks area (currently at about 0.5%). The only thing which could change this prediction would be a change in the network for businesses which would make it more appealing for them to be on there, the brand pages are currently (and for the foreseeable future) the same as normal profiles, there are no vanity urls (they will come in 2012) but regardless I suspect G+ is set to stay small… for now.

Linking Social Networks will begin to die (again) - It started in 2012 as delicious and other such networks began to get smaller. Digg and Reddit are main-stayers in the arena and wills survive 2012 but other such networks like Slash.Dot may well die off completely. This will also happen to networks such as Quora. I say they will die, before they do they will get swallowed by a bigger fish, for all its worth.

Trends of Blogging in 2012

An End to Corporate Blogging? – no quite. Corporate Blogging will cease being a portal simply to tell the world (or not) about boring corporate crap. It will become an area of sharing news and behind the scenes info. It will become a more open area where companies aren’t scared that if they say something a competitor will thieve an idea! A more open attitude will also begin to appear between companies sharing research and data (that isn’t commercially sensitive), such as pre-trial drug information from pharmaceutical companies.

Mini Blogs Go BOOM – 2010 and 2011 has seen a huge growth in smaller “micro blogs” thanks to tumblr and other such networks. In 2012 this trend will continue as more “normal” people begin to share things in public, not just using facebook (soon to be close gated).

Companies Scrap Blogging – many companies in 2012 will cease to blog on a daily or weekly basis, favouring to spend time and money more on social networking. (if you want to know where to spend your time in social networking for business read our recent post on this). This will be the beginning of the middle bit (yes its already started) of the end of the blogging world as we know it.

More Blogs will Go Video / Audio – In what maybe an odd thing to say for someone typing this article, more blogs will turn to multimedia in 2012. We will see more networks spring up, like the TWiT.TV network. Indeed, this very site will be taking to video-blogging / netcasting / podcasting in early 2012 as we continue to grow. We will also see a huge growth in the YouTube like services, but we’ll also see some audio based start-ups go big like AudioBoo. It will be an exciting time to be in the world of multimedia and blogging.

Trends of Search Analytics in 2012

Bye Bye Referrer Keywords – Google has already begun hiding keywords from Google Analytics. This is a trend that will boom across platforms in 2012, which will move the focus away from “ranking for keywords” towards “ranking for relevance and conversion” … aka more of a concentration on quality and conversion.

Rankings Die … but Slowly – as mentioned earlier in passing, Rankings will begin to die as Search Moves to be more “now” and “social”. This means because of our human way of being lazy it will begin to get harder to get none personalised results. Already +1′s are moving up search pages, latest news / blogs appear higher up, even if they are less relevant. In 2012 this will happen more and more, until eventually Search Rankings become relative to a person – this will add to the effect of concentration on conversion.

RealTime Analytics Takes Off (at last) – for years many competitors to Google Analytics have offered RealTime results, 2011 saw Google catch up somewhat. In 2012 you cane expect lots more features to be made realtime by Google as rankings matter less and keywords mean less. Will we see realtime rankings for “white searches” I doubt that, but we will get more data than ever before, and it will still be free (unlike most competitors).

Can you think of any more trends for 2012 that I have missed off the list? And what do you think of this list, will my prediction come true or not?

The end is nigh for Yellow Pages and Thomson Local

Andy Kinsey — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:54:25 +0000

Many of my recent discussions have been about SEO Local Search. This in turn lead to my recent post about best practices when setting up Google Places for your business. But one of the more contentious and rapidly more talked about factors in local search is our lovely friends at the Yellow Pages and Thomson Local.
Dont forget we’ve spoken about yell.com before.

Now before we begin, let me make clear a fair amount of what I am about to say are things that I have done, experienced or had permission from clients to talk about. I will not name those clients (past or present) but suffice to say it is their views I will convey and not just my own.

With local search being a growing market, given Google Places show up in search results more and more, their default mobile search page now has buttons to say “local restaurants” or “local businesses” etc the question may not be is the end now, but rather why they still exist. If the question is to be the latter, the answer is simply money – there are still people who don’t realise they can do more for free than using either the Yellow Pages or Thomson Local. But this post is about the former, outlining why Google Places is different and better than either the Yellow Pages or Thomson Local.

Before we go on, I do want to say that both the Yellow Pages and Thomson Local, as well as Google Places, offer different “things” for different markets – but we in this post are talking about Local Search, not PPC or their websites (as discussed previously, link above). Both of the “Google Competitors” will have something the other doesn’t, for example Thomson Local we know is some how linked with Bing Local Search, but so is yell – and if Bing coping Google search results is anything to go by Google Places will also be being copied to some extent. So lets say it’s a level playing field here … so why should you pay Yellow Pages or Thomson Local for something you can do yourself … for FREE!?

The answer is you shouldn’t.

Both of these companies are known for going through people who make free listings on their respective websites and offering to “enhance” or “guarantee” local search listings. The way more often than not, if you trip them up, they do this is via making you a free listing on Google Places (just as you can yourself) and then giving you a few clicks via PPC. It doesn’t take much to get either party to own up to this. Oh and don’t forget for your buck, they will also put you into their directory, which you can also do for free anyway – if you can stand a fair few phone calls from that company offering you a load of bull.

So I hear you now saying but Yellow Pages and Thomson Local are known to people in the UK. Well yes, they have a physical brand – but did you notice the shrinking of the size of the Yellow Pages over the past 5 years – ask why is this and you will soon see that it’s because no longer are those paper directories the default – ask why they offer you local listings on Google and you will understand that this is why the paper directory is dead, Google is now the default “go to” point for most people looking for a local shop or services.

An example of local results showing up on a search is a search for Piano Lessons in Glossop or Electrical Services in Manchester – and by the way this is probably the most common way of searching for a shop or service in an area … services / shop name IN area name.

The next question to pose is why do the Yellow Pages or Thomson Local claim to have a higher conversion rate? Well the simple fact is they have a smaller audience, it’s a target audience … people go to their sites to look for something specific will click on maybe 2 or 3 links to get what they want and bingo … conversion rates will always be higher here than on a search engine where the results are shown with contextual results – which are actually much better for some searches and what people want. So yes people may want to know what is close to them but they also want to know which is best, which is why Google Places conversions are always increasing as they have reviews of each location – supplied by real people both via Google itself and other websites like trustpilot or freeindex.

Another reason for this claim is of course that they want you to part with a few sheckles, and pay for inclusion. This is also why they are failing, because Google Places and Bing Local Search are actually free to register too, you get verified (which yell don’t do) and everything is free. Yellow Pages and Thomson Local want to make just a few more quid before their game is up … and boy is that time close.

Google Places (and Bing Local Search) offer far superior results to that of the Yellow Pages or Thomson Local, they even take into account what your friend like and don’t like, what others around you have done, are doing or are likely to do … Search engines are far far superior in so many ways… and they are free!

If you want further proof that the Yellow Pages and Thomson Local know they are in trouble, take into account that they no longer simply offer you a local listing on Google, they offer it in a bundle with PPC / adWords, why? well thats because in 2009 they stopped playing the game of charging for this alone, people realised it was free, and they now claim to “guarantee you a listing on Google” … its nothing of the kind – it is simply PPC and nothing else and they charge through the roof for it. Put simply they know the game is up, they have little worth in this rapidly changing world of online media, and with Google putting local search at the centre of their mobile search it really is a matter of time for the rip off merchants that are Yellow Pages and Thomson Local. Don’t get me wrong they may still be ok at “paper” and “ground” marketing in the real world but online and socially they are nothing … oh and just a tip the Royal Mail offer much better real world marketing than these too companies ever could.

Don’t forget you can set up your Google Places listing for free! and here are my 10 steps to success.

Setting Up Google Places – Success in 10 Easy Steps

Andy Kinsey — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:00:30 +0000

This post is the product of a recent spate of enquiries I received, in essence each wanting to know How to optimise Google Places. However, my experience is that Google Places is pretty hard to optimise, this is because Google wants all businesses to supply the same data (great) and it will then bring your result forward if it is relevant (or sometimes if it is just well reviewed). From this basic overview it is easy to see why its fairly hard to optimise, but hold tight because you can optimise your listing during it’s set up.

NB: If you have already set up your listing, use this list as a check-list for things you should have done or still need to do – it is not too late.

10 Easy Steps to Success with Google Places

Your Company Name
Google want your real company name, don’t mess around with it. However, if your business name is non-descriptive add a keyword or two to the end (eg Andy’s may become Andy’s Design Agency).
Your Company Address
This sounds a little mad, but people really do pretend to have a business somewhere it isn’t… it means that small little villages can end up full of business in online directories but not in real life. Google (and Bing) will check your address, Google send out a post card with a code for you to activate your listing.
Your Company Phone Number
Do not use a non-geographic (0800, 0845) number, use a local phone number, this adds to the trustworthy nature of your listing. If you are on the road a lot use your mobile number, but have a landline too if you can.
Choosing a Company Category
This for most should be simple but here is a tip. Think about how people search for you. Use the most common category from the search pool (eg for me this is Website Designer) as your top category. The next 4 should be the categories you think you should be coming under. A handy tip is to try and avoid repetition.
Additional Company Information
Google Places allows you to add “additional information” to your listing. These are sets of blank boxes, but use them to describe your business. For example if you sell certain brands, list your top selling brands. The more information you can supply the happier Google will be.
Company Pictures and Videos
This may sound obvious, but if you are a shop put up a picture of your store front, possibly views inside your store and also sale banners – these are a selling space as well as a chance to show you are real. If you have videos on YouTube, link to them, again it all adds up in making Google happier.
A Company Account
Do not be tempted to set up a business listing in a personal account, I made this mistake once and Google really don’t like it. My advice is if you are setting up an account for a client, always create individual Google accounts for them – you can use them for YouTube etc, but never use a personal account.
Your Company Website
An often overlooked part of Google Places, mainly as it can be taken for granted, is the website address. I have found through monitoring and managing Google Places accounts that you can do all the work in the world to make a listing better but if you do not have your own website in the listing you will struggle. Make sure it is there.
Create Offers / Coupons
Without a doubt these are the most often forgotten part of Google Places. But they are very useful. In essence it should only be repeating what is already on your website, but in reality it gives you another chance to sell. If you’ve a special offer (say 10% off if you use this code, or a BOGOF type offer) use Google Places to promote it, its quick easy and simple.
Get Real Customer Reviews
I can’t emphasise enough the need for reviews to be from real customers, it is so easy to tell when they are not! And if someone spots one and tells a few people on twitter, you may suffer for it. So use an external party (not Google or your own website) to supply reviews, the likes of TrustPilot (you pay for this) and FreeIndex (this is free) show up on Google Listings and Google Shopping – make use of them.
10 is a nice number, but its about quality
If you need more help either leave a comment or pop over the Google Places Guidelines for help. The Guidelines are pretty clear and give some handy advice.

SiteMaps – What Are They?

Andy Kinsey — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:23:19 +0000

Putting it simply, sitemaps allow web-masters and website owners to help direct Google (and other search engines) to index their web content optimally.

In the simplest form a Sitemap is an XML file listing a set of url’s of a given domain, usually with some extra meta data about each url. The meta data that usually surrounds a url can include: last updated, how often a page is updated and relative importance to the website.

Search Engine Crawlers (spiders) crawl your website based on links from around the internet, and of course within your own website. A sitemap is simply a supplement for such indexation and not a replacement, this is always important to remember. A sitemap should be seen as the helping hand to a search engine to ensure that all your pages are found and indexed, as well as that correct priority is given to each page – for example you may indicate that your homepage is the most important page and contact page least important.

Sitemap Schema 0.9, a W3 consortium build is the current default standard for most sitemaps – though there are unique alternatives like video sitemaps around. SS0.9 is a set of protcols that allows for more than what I mention above, in terms of meta data, but given it’s all a tad boring here is a link if you want to know more about the sitemap schemas. SS0.9 is widely adopted by search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo (now powered in part by Bing).

At this point in our series of SiteMaps series I feel it is important to make clear that most sources, from wikipedia to seomoz don’t think sitemaps can have a huge effect on seach engines. This is one point I am challenging in my SiteMap Experiment, I believe that it has some effect on indexation rates and to a milder extent ranking. – Now on day 7 of the experiment it is already becoming clear indexed pages has increase a fair amount, see numbers from the sitemap experiment.

Next: SiteMaps – What’s inside?

40 Ways to Improve Online Sales

Andy Kinsey — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:40:23 +0000

Welcome to 2011 firstly, a new year and a new will to improve things across your websites (i do hope) If not maybe you should think about it… wait you already are you’re reading a post about improving your site … maybe you should point a few people to this blog if you think they may not have the will power.

Anyway, with enough caffeine in my system for 25 people I’ve compiled the list below of 50 easy ways to improve your internet sales.

Now you may be asking (as many have) why I am talking this year about improving the existing rather than redesigning as I did last year. The answer is simple, this year I believe the recession will really hit home, businesses of all sizes need to be more savvy about how they spend their marketing budget and one savvy way is to improve the existing and not “star from scratch” as many SEO firms may advise. Everything can be improved with a little will power and skill.

Analytics

Set up your site to use an analytics program, if you haven’t already. There are several free services such as Google Analytics which can offer some great insight into your visitors. (note: if the program uses javascript put it as the final item before the tag in your code and not at the top)
Set up goals, targets and conversion methods. If you use Google Analytics this can be done via the package else you may have to do some math to find out if you’ve met targets.
Use your analytics package to find out what keywords and phrases people search for when they find you, change your pages to see what effect this will have on visits. Manipulating keywords on a page is one of the best ways to increase visitor numbers.
Make sure that users are landing on product pages firstly, other pages including your home page are secondary to this. A person is looking for a product generally before a website, so make the products more visible. If the analytics show product pages aren’t working ask why not, play around and use the tips below to improve the conversion rate.
Use the analytics to check what people are searching for internally within your website, this will give you a better insight into what people are looking for on your website and will help you to find trends within your visitor base.

Techie Stuff (you may need a developer for this)

Compress and Resize your images using an image editor, or imagemagik if available on your server. In doing this you will reduce load time of your website and also the file will have a smaller footprint on your server (it will save you space and so eventually money).
Ensure you have nice friendly urls, no body wants to remember a link which is example.com/12334dfd.html?dfd make it easier for people and search engines something like example.com/category/product-name if your are a shop
Ensure that you are consistant in use of www. or non-www swapping between the two can cause user confusion and makes it harder for people to link to you. Using htaccess you can ensure one will forward to another.
Check for broken links, nothing says “confused customer” like a link broken
Check for missing images, this is just a silly mistake and looks unprofessional
Ensure your checkout pages use SSL and have a valid certificate.
If you are using a database driven website (none static file) then ensure you allow websites to be cached for a period of time, this will lower the requirements of your server as the page is loaded once in that period and not potentially millions.

Usability & Products

Remove any non-critical animation from your pages, this means no moving banners, no bouncing balls … nothing to distract the customer.
Ensure a continuous style through the website, have the navigation and sidebars the same style throughout. Don’t have half your products in one layout and half in another. Moving and changing things leads to confusion.
Don’t use jargon anywhere on your website, especially not in your terms, delivery or returns pages.
Have a clear call to action on each and every page (and yes it can be as simple as clicking into a category or product)
Ensure your price, product options and “buy now” button are located together – this makes things clearer and much easier to find.
Ensure that at the top of each and every product page you have the product title, it is surprising just how many people don’t – and whilst you’re at it ensure that the page title (that thing at the top of the browser) also includes the product name.
Use the best product images you can, normally manufacturers are happy for you to use their images, but do ask first. If you are selling your own photos have the full image there with zoomy stuff, you can still protect it from people getting the file. If its web design work then you may want to have a screen shot as a sample and link to the real thing!
Ensure your links are different to other text when in a paragraph, on this site for instance they are underlined and blue, you can just underline or make bold. Whatever you do don’t make them blink though! Also on hover of the link change it some how, make it bold or change the colour show that this is where they will be clicking.
If you don’t have an ability to search on your site, get one. Ok I break this rule with this website but all e-commerce websites MUST have one of these and it must show clear results. If you don’t have a mechanism to search the site try google customer search engine.
No body wants to really know about you if your website looks professional that is enough, put your about link in the footer of your page not the top navigation. The same goes for sitemap, this does NOT belong in your top navigation.
Put your contact details in plain view, don’t hide them – put your phone number in the header with a clear link to your contact page. Never under-estimate how much confidence this will give potential customers. Also on your contact page (and in your footer if possible) show your real address, nothing says “you wont get your product” like no address anywhere on the website.
On category pages ensure it is clear they should click through to the product, and where possible have a buy now link on your category page also.

Typography / Styling

Ensure that line spacing in any given paragraph is of 1.2 to 1.45 em. This will make the text much easier to read regardless of the font you are using. It is a suggestion of the RNIB also.
Ensure headings are close and clearly related to any given paragraph. If you don’t think it will help add a huge space between your heading and text you will soon see how hard and confusing it can be.
Don’t (ever) have more than 12-15 words on a single line, studies in the US have shown that users have a hard time reading more than this on a screen.
If you are in doubt about your font-size always go for the larger font, it is better to be safe than sorry.
Use “house fonts” these are the fonts which can be found on every computer across the globe (generally) … fonts like Helvetica, Arail, Times, Courier and Verdana. These are safe fonts to use on any website.

Your Copy

Short Sentences with small words. Users are not stupid but they are in a hurry!
Have paragraphs of a few sentences only, and ensure that you can scan read them quickly.
Spell check everything you publish. The number of complaints I have had for mis-spellings on this website is scary – so either spell check or don’t but be prepared if you don’t.
Get someone to proof read your copy before you publish it, and then read it yourself again just to double check.
Never outsource your copy to india, by this I mean anyone who doesn’t have a clue what they are talking about. A good SEO / CopyWriter will tell you they need to study your business and industry before writing anything down, if they just jump in – either they know everything already (lucky you) or you’re going to end up with some baddddddddd copy!
Never on an e-commerce website simply copy and paste a description from one website to another, even if the manufacturer said to do so. It just doesn’t work! Your website has its own style and copy voice / tone, changing this will unsettle some users.

Using Organic Internet Marketing Strategies

Title Tags – ensure you have the product name and brand name in the title. No matter how many times I tell people this they always think they should include your shops name… don’t do this! unless you are well known like Argos or Millets just don’t do it.
Description tag – this will default to your first one or two sentences if you’re not careful …but this does mean you have to be good to at selling in these sentences where most aren’t. Use this tag with care to describe and sell (yes it’s a sales pitch) your product on your website – look professional.
Canonicalisation tag – a little known tag that tells search engines this is where this content originates, this means if you have duplicate items with different url’s search engines know where the original is and not to give you a penalty for duplicate content.
Canonicalise your urls – ensure you either user www. or non-www. throughout otherwise you will cause lots of confusion and loose some link juice if some point to it and some without! use .htaccess to ensure you use one or the other.
Ensure you link correctly, if you link to .com/index.html once do it all the time if you just link to .com once do that all the time – they are not interchangeable.
Sign up for Google webmaster tools, Bing webmaster tools and Yahoo site explorer – each have the same kind of tools as the next but based around that search engine meaning you can really fine tune some stuff.
Go semantic – ensure you’ve no errors or bugs in your code and that it meets the requirements of the bulk of users (you won’t fulfil all needs but you should always try to do so). If you need help with this ask your developer

Yes i know there are 42 shush

Search Market Results September 2010

Andy Kinsey — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:59:37 +0000

One question I’ve been asked and asked my self time and imte again is just what effect will Google Instant have on the search market, will people even like it. However, It isn’t really a question of liking, you can turn it off but for “normal people” it’s not so clear how. This means stick with instant or go bing… mmmm so this was a make or break for Google and the september search market results 2010 tell a clear story.

People seem to love Google Instant!

The altered experience and new way of searching requires some learning from both SEO’s and the searcher. However it is very very useful and proof of not just my love but the worlds love is in the comScore market share results which shows a total “core search” growth for Google of 2.4%!

Yahoo seems to be on the road to death with a loss of 1.8% of it’s share, Microsoft sites (including Bing) lost 0.8 of the market – AOL and ASK also lost market share in September.

So what does this show?

These results show just how “in tune” with the people Google are. Eric Schmidt (Google BigWig) recently said “google know what you want before you want it” in an interview, this is so true and for years this has been know. Some people think this is just proof Google are evil… but they aren’t they are just able to predict trends with greats accuracy due to the number of searches on any subject and use of real-time data. So for me it was a given that when Google announced Instant on sept 8th I knew it would be a huge hit, just as most Google products are.

The Results
Take a look at the comScore Market Share Results Here.

comScore Total Core Search Share Report* September 2010 vs. August 2010 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch
Core Search Entity	Total Core Search Share (%)
Core Search Entity	Aug-10	Sep-10	Point Change
Total Core Search	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google Sites	60.5%	62.9%	2.4
Yahoo! Sites	21.0%	19.2%	-1.8
Microsoft Sites	12.8%	12.5%	-0.3
Ask Network	3.5%	3.4%	-0.1
AOL LLC Network	2.2%	2.0%	-0.2

Want to get your website to the top of google? need to clean up the site design or just work on marketing the website? Let Andy Kinsey / SEOAndy Help.

July 2010 Search Engine Statistics – Love the Bing

Andy Kinsey — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:06:51 +0000

Well earlier this week (13th July 2010) ComScore released it’s June 2010 search engine statistics. ComScore release these figures once a month, they use an ever changing formula to create more and more accurate results. The statistics are in essence related to the number of searches conducted by each search engine. So what did the results say?

Well as expected, Google top the chart – with 62.6% of the current market share, a loss of 1.1% from May 2010. Google was then followed by Yahoo! (18.9% up 0.6% from May). In third place was Bing (formerly MSN) with a growth of 0.6% taking Bing to an ever growing market share of 12.7%. In fourth remains ASK search network, at 3.6% and with no change from the previous month. Finally, in fifth is AOL who suffered a loss of 0.1% taking them to just 2.2% of the search market.

So what does this all mean?

Well clearly it means that the search market is changing, no longer is MSN (now bing) the stick in the mud that wouldn’t change. But the important thing of note here is that Bing continues to grow, and with Bing taking over the search functionality of Yahoo! later this year, Bing (using todays figures) would have a market share of 31.6% – a truly staggering thought and something that I believe means now is the time to take note of Bing (and not to wait several months) for SEO’s. So with this in mind, it is now time to Love the Bing.

But it isn’t just SEO’s that need to take note it is other search engines, and this is something Google are already doing (almost in fear it feels). With lasts months role out of background images, Google made a move to be “more like” Bing – but after much uproar in the first few seconds of being live, Google decided unlike Bing having a default image wasn’t a good idea and it is now optional.

The one thing the results do not show is that the world is showing an exponential growth of mobile search. With the advent and influence of the iPhone, Blackberry and Android’s of the world this isn’t going to slow down any time soon and is a huge target market. However, without specific results we can only presume that search is in the same proportions – though I know at least in the UK blackberry (and anyone on the Three mobile network) searches are defaulted to Yahoo!, android in 90% of cases I believe are pointed at Google (the creators) … as for apple I also see these guys using Google … So sorry bing but you need to get up and make some deals – message here is if your mobile focused target Google mobile and Yahoo mobile.

See the official ComScore standings here.

15 SEO Myths That Need To Die (But Won’t)

Andy Kinsey — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:53:02 +0000

Now there are many many SEO and general Internet Marketing myths that are floating around, and have been since the dawn of time. (Ok, dawn of the internet). Today I want to take a look at 15 of the most annoying myths, these are all a complete pile of poop.

Generally you will be told these via huge adverts on a website or over the phone when someone is cold-calling you to try and sell you a service – beware of these commission monkies.

So the 15 Myths which are a load of are:

We’re endorsed (or work with) Google / Bing / Yahoo.
Google Analytics spies on you, don’t use it.
Your PageRank (PR) is your search rank (or is highly related too).
You should have as many meta tags as possible.
Having country specific site’s (in different languages) creates duplicate content.
URL’s rank higher if you end them in .html
Trading (buying/selling) links increases search rank.
Linking to google.com will help your search rankings (or PR).
SEO is a one-time activity (or once per year).
SiteMaps aren’t for users.
There is no need to link all pages, spiders will find them via your XML sitemap.
Placing links in tiny (almost invisible) text at the bottom of a page is effective for ranking.
Using an submission site to X thousand “search engines” is good for site ranking.
Hyphenated domain names are amazing for SEO.
Keyword Density = High Rankings

_{This post is sponsored by UKHost4U the UK’s premier hosting solution.}

External Content Duplication – Done Right

Andy Kinsey — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:26:25 +0000

Over the past few month’s I’ve come across many a site with this issue, and the website owner always always says the same thing … (and its right to an extent) … we are the brand leader, bringing something new to the market and want to be seen for x, y and z … and to emphasise this we want it over 3 or 4 websites or sub-domains … but we want the content to be pretty much the same… but content duplication isn’t allowed by the search engines.

Well ok it is true the you can be penalised for content duplication over one or more websites seen to be related, mainly via an IP address or similar domain or as a sub domain (which Google is known to treat as a different domain) … So I here you ask how can I be saying you can do it right … how can you legitimately duplicate content over websites and domains … well it is fairly easy

The answer is “cross domain canonical tagging”

By now we should all be using the meta tag canonical – aka telling the browsers and search engines the content originates at this websites and location … it is all your content and not taken from else where. (if not take a quick look on Google for it).

Now to use content from one site on another you need to show that you accept the origins of the content as not being on your site and being from another URL. This can be done on any element using the tag rel=”canonical” – so links, images, block quotes, data tables anything with any attribute (including a full DIV) can use this tag and search engines will pick it up.

Still have questions? Please do ask them below or twitter me @andykinsey