How To Choose Your Keywords For Your Website

Choosing your keywords is a massive part of the whole SEO and online presence experience, but the same old question as to how to choose them effectively still gets asked on a regular basis.

Keywords are still very, very important to search engines, and even if they now have a little less impact on ranking, they are still a vital part of your website and something you must get right. A few of the older search engines used to rely on meta keyword tags and nothing else, but as the engines are now more advanced they do not generally just focus on this, but they do use your keywords in many different ways.

Keywords are used in your Title tags, description tags and your keyword tags, but they are also used throughout all of your content, links and many other factors. So, it is so important that you get this right, or at least you start on the right road forward as the keywords can be tweaked throughout the life of your website.

The main question we tend to get asked about keywords is how to choose them and what do we base our suggestions on. Although we use a variety of methods, the two basic methods, and arguably the most efficient, is to look at what your competitors are doing and to use a couple of the keyword tools currently on the internet.

Any company, website, product or service can benefit from making sure they are using the correct keywords on their website. It is quite usual to see websites where webmasters have failed to complete their tags or have just not really given a thought to the keywords they should use, but don’t forget, visitors find your website through keywords, so it can never be overlooked.

Keyword Tools

There are a few keyword tools on the internet, with our favourites being the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and the paid version of Word Tracker (http://www.wordtracker.com).

For example, if you were selling property investments, you would type property investment into one of these keyword research tools. You would then be given a list of the keywords and the search volumes for each of them. Whereas it would take you a long time to rank top of Google for Property Investment, you can use the produced list to look for long tail alternatives and therefore focus on them.

Competitor Research

A good way of finding out about keywords, you could and possibly should be using is to take a look at what your competitors are doing. Simply choose a keyword, type it into Google and make a spreadsheet of your competitors and the Title, Description and Keywords they use in their tags. I would recommend doing this for the first ten results, or the first ten most relevant results if you only want to feature your competitors and not necessarily any website that is ranking.

If you do this for the top ten, you can then see straight away all of the keywords they are using, and you can then use this help plan your keywords, but do not copy them or simply duplicate them, use the information to try and capture the same search terms but mix in some of your own and use your own unique combinations.

The Next Steps

Once you have your data from the Keyword research tools and your competitor research, you can then begin to plan your keywords. As previously mentioned, you do not have to just focus on your main keyword. Use the research to pick out smaller, long tail keywords that are less competitive.

By doing this you might be appealing to less searchers, but you have more of a chance of ranking highly for the search term.

In my opinion, its better to come on the first page for a search term that might get 2,000 searches a month than page 20 for something that gets 20,000. All of the research you carry out will allow you to start aiming for some of the lesser searched keywords, whilst still making sure you are focusing on your main keywords, which will just take longer to get high rankings in Google for, if they are very, very popular and competitive.

You will then use your keywords for your meta tags, your content, page names, alt tags and linking campaigns, so it really does prove that the work you do now will be able to benefit many of your SEO challenges, meaning that keyword research is something you not only have to do, you have to do it from day one, even before you have launched your website.

Clear Web Services Offer Free Website SEO Review

Clear Web Services have announced a free SEO website review, aimed at helping customers make the most of their websites and to help to make sure their websites are performing well.

Find out how to improve those all important search rankings. They will recommend changes to boost your rankings and to help you improve your rankings in Google, Yahoo and other major search engines!

The FREE review looks at your existing website, search engine rankings and on page optimisation and even if you do not use their services after, it will hopefully give you some helpful ideas about how to make your website work better for you.

They are offering the review to show the improvements clients can make to their websites for an immediate, short and long term improvement, regardless of whether you use their services or not.

Clear Web Services offers SEO Services and Web Design in the Forest of Dean, serving Coleford, Lydney, Cinderford, Clearwell and many other areas in the Forest. They also cover Gloucester, South Wales, including Chepstow and Monmouth and Hereford, in particular Ross on Wye.

Clear Web Services is an established and experienced web design consultancy that specialises in SEO services, cost per click, web design and online marketing. They also offer email marketing management, social bookmarking opportunities and website analysis reviews.

If you would like to book your free website review, please visit the Free SEO Review page, by clicking here. You can also find out more about the services Clear Web Services are offering by visiting the website.

So You’ve Just Launched Your Website And Now You Need Traffic

One of the most common misconceptions I and my colleagues come across at every new client meeting, is the impression that once you launch your website you will have instant traffic, visitors and of course sales. Sadly, this is just not the case, and the launch of the website will not guarantee anything, except for the start of the hard work and effort promoting your new venture and getting people to see it.

Launching a website is not really the same as launching a new shop. There are some similarities, but the major difference is you will not have people or visitors walking down the street and suddenly spotting you. The internet requires people to search for what they are looking for, be it via search engines, links from other sites or directories, the main way people will find you will be by looking for you or the product or service you are offering.

Once your website is up and running, you have filled it full of good quality content and made sure its working, is navigable and looks the business, you then need to start getting people to find you. For my clients, I usually recommend the following to get the early traffic to their site, and you can choose to do some or all of them to make the biggest impact.

Cost Per Click – With any new client, I always recommend a small but periodic cost per click campaign with Google and Yahoo and if the clients needs fits right, I will also look at the Facebook campaigns, which can work very well for some kinds of clients. For the first year of a website, you are going to struggle to get a decent and consistent level of natural traffic, despite what everyone says and claims. Google takes a good year to work out what your site is about, how worthy you are of good SERPs and to balance a consistent ranking. A small CPC campaign doesn’t have to cost much and can mean the difference of having little traffic to having good traffic from day one, which is important in the first year of any project.

Press Releases – Tell the world about your new site by release Press Releases. There are many free press release sites out there, with some offering a very cheap paid service like OfficialWire, which gets your story all over the internet and into Google News. These press releases should pick up a little bit of traffic, but more importantly they give you instant links back to your site and start to make your name in Google, especially if you are clever and thoughtful with the title and content of your press release.

Article Submissions – Following on from the press releases, write a couple of articles, sign up to the free article sites, like Ezine Articles and Articles Base and start submitting your articles to them. All of these sites offer you a good audience, a link back to your own site and the chance to start to become some kind of authority on your subject. I often get told by clients that the service or product they offer, they can not write anything about it. This is total nonsense. If you were making and selling crockery pots, you could write about how you make them, things to avoid, how to make a perfect pot and many more. There is ALWAYS something you can write about in your field of expertise.

One Way Directory Links – This time consuming but worthwhile project needs to be started immediately and spread out over the course of your website and business. There are listings of thousands of free directories and also paid directories, but make sure you have the main ones covered and then start building links over a period of time. Try to keep the directories relevant, make sure they are indexed and vary your anchor text to try and capture relevant keywords. This won’t get you loads of traffic, but might pick up the odd few visitors, with a view to it making an impact later down the road.

Run A Blog – Google loves blogs and so do many people who currently frequent the internet. Set your self up a blog or use a blog integration service and start writing good quality content and on topic and relevant articles etc. Then, start submitting your blog to all of the blog directories, RSS readers and blog submission sites to start getting good traffic. Make sure your blog has a good amount of content before doing this, as most of the sites need to see a high level of effort before accepting you in their listings.

Social Bookmarking – Use a social bookmarking service or do it yourself, either way, get out on the social sites like Facebook, Digg and thousands of others and start telling the world about your sites. Bookmark your site, your articles, your content and your services; make sure everyone knows about what you are doing. On the flip side, only do this if you genuinely have something good to show the world, else people will just end up considering you a spammer, and this is not what you want.

Blog Comments – There will be many other related and relevant sites out there, many of which are looking for blog comments and even guest writers. Get out and find a list of relevant websites, start commenting on existing blogs and offer to write some content for the blog itself. Once again, if you are going to do this, make sure you are genuinely contributing something to each blog, else you just end up spamming other peoples work and there will be few that take kindly to that

Things To Consider Before You Start Your Website

Having a website, be it for your company, business, hobby, association or just for fun is an exciting and logical move forward, especially if you are seeking new customers or members or are simply just looking to tell the world about you or what you do. But, if you want to do well and be successful, you should start thinking about your website well before you start building it.

Below are some ideas and tips when it comes to planning your website and what to do before you begin the building process.

Choose Your Domain Name (URL) Carefully – Something that quite often gets overlooked or gets left to the last thing is the domain name you are going to be using. Domain names or URL’s have keyword benefit, so you must choose your domain carefully. If you were selling blue slippers, your domain in an ideal world would feature the words blue and slippers, as this will have some ranking benefit. A prime example is if you type “property investment” into Google and look at the first result you see. It is hard exercise to change things over after the even, so make sure your domain name is relevant and try to get a keyword or two in their if possible.

Think About Your Goals – Don’t launch a website for the sake of it, or just because you think you need one. Take a step back and decide what you want to achieve from the website and write these down into a list. Are you looking for sales? Are you looking to promote an event? There are many reasons for getting a website, but by writing down your goals, you can the make sure your website is designed to try and achieve your requirements.

Look At Your Competition – If you are looking to launch a business online, a good way to learn what to do right, and of course what not to do, is to look at what your competitors are doing. Write a list of the top five competitors, make notes of why their website is good and also what they could do better. By doing this you can then implement the best ideas on your website and also capitalise on the areas that they are weaker in.

Plan Your Menu And Pages – In a spread sheet, make two columns. In the first column write down your main menu and in the second you can then put in the sub menus or child menus. By doing this you will get a good idea of how many pages you are going to have and what content you need, and you can also see any areas that might be weak or maybe have two many pages.

Write Some Unique And Quality Content – A good website is built around one thing, and that’s good quality and unique content. Google loves content, your users will love content and making these two happy should be your top priority. Good content keeps people coming back, and if you get this done before your site goes live, it will save much time and frantic rushing towards launch date.

Top Tips On How To Choose Your SEO Company

Choosing a good and reliable SEO Company can be quite hard, especially with the dramatic rise in businesses offering this service in the past 2 years. Search Engine Optimisation is one of the biggest investments you will make into your company’s online marketing strategy, so it is vital you make the right choice when appointing your SEO consultancy, as the wrong choice could lead to a few nightmares on the road ahead, with being dropped by Google if the methods are black hat a distinct possibility.

Below are some tips and ideas to make sure you choose the best SEO Company for your company, business or website.

How long have they been established? As with most things in the life, the longer you have been doing something, normally the better you are at. If possible, take into account how long the SEO company has been established, the chances are if its been around for a few years they will be well up to date with the latest strategies and have a decent history and background.

Have they worked in your niche before? Although SEO is a general operation, some SEO companies specialise in a few niches. For example, if you are a property company it can sometimes be a good idea to look at an SEO company that has worked with a property or related project before, as the experience is a major asset for any SEO campaign.

Can they provide testimonials and recommendations? Any good and reliable SEO Company will not only have good testimonials, but will make sure they tell you they have them from the start! Ask for some testimonials and also for the phone numbers of people they have worked for before. If they can not provide these then personally, I would walk away, as they either have a bad past or they simply do not have any happy clients.

Do they have a good portfolio? Again, have a look at the previous projects they have completed. Do the sites rank well, does the case study look good, and are the sites all performing well. You can also make contact with the firms they have worked for using this method to check out how good the SEO Company is.

Are their methods white hat and legitimate? White Hat = Good. Black Hat = disastrous and will be a major blow to you once the engines find out what you have been up to. Check out the methods the SEO Company will use, speak to others about whether these are good or bad and make sure that the methods they use are within the rules and guidelines of the engines. Trying to cut corners will only back fire, so it’s better for things to take a bit longer but have proven results, and not a short hop into fame and then misery.

Do they make any “too good to be true” claims? Any SEO Company that makes an guarantees are simply not worth working with, in my opinion. We can not guarantee anything, we can not promise you a first page ranking and we can not promise you a thousand hits by next Wednesday. Just like the weather, the search engines algorithms change all the time, so these claims are just unfounded. The only guarantee most of us can offer is to work hard and within the rules, and this is the only guarantee you need.

Google To Launch Google Chrome OS – A New Operating System

Around a year ago, I had a meeting with a client. After the main work was done and a few beers later, we moved onto other topics, including the usual moans and groans about the issues we have or have had with our various operating systems. I am not a betting man, but I said at that moment that I thought Google would launch its own operating system, and it would seem my prediction is about to come true.

As the Google Blog says – “It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.”

Initially, we will not be able to use it on our home or work pcs, as Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will be targeted at netbooks. But, without any doubt, it will not be long before Google will release something that will begin to match the powers of Windows and we will all be able to make a choice about the platform our computers and laptops will run on, as at the moment, we have little if no choice at all.

One of the most powerful claims being made is that users of Google Chrome OS will not have to worry about viruses. As the Google Blog continues to mention “And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates.”

How this is possible we do not yet know, but wouldn’t it be a dream to live in a world where our computers are not subjected to millions of attacks and where you can surf the internet without the worry of a Trojan hitting your pc or an IFrame injection from a site that was ok yesterday. Having seen the impact of clients that have been affected by hackers and viruses, it would make the job we do even more enjoyable, as the major threat we all face is picking up a virus, no matter how careful you are.

The fact that Google Chrome OS will be open source will mean the community it seeks to serve can play a part in updating it and making it even more secure, just as we have seen with the success of Mozilla Firefox, in my opinion, the safest browser for the internet.

I for one can not wait to see the new system. As a web designer and SEO consultant, we live and breath by what Google does, most of the time we do enjoy this and therefore to be able to use an operating system made by them, could be quite an advanced move forward in the world in which we live.

If the claims Google are making come true, I wonder how Microsoft might respond in 2011?

Press Releases And Search Engine Optimisation

As we have talked about many times before, SEO is all about ticking many different boxes to try and make sure you website performs well in the major engines, in terms of deliverance of traffic and ranking results.

In the past few years, the importance and use of press releases has continued to grow and now typically form a large part of any service Clear Web Services offers to its clients, with regular press release submission via the major press release sites, using both free and paid accounts.

We recently had a client ask us why we used press releases for SEO, when it is probable they would never get picked up by journalists and published in the major press, which to be honest, is the main reason offline companies use press release companies, to gain exposure.

When we submit press releases we do it for a variety of reasons, but most centre on high quality links back to your site from each press release and also the extra exposure a good press release site can give to you. The ability to get your company name into Google News and other major news engines is a really useful extra to have, and if you combine that with some good quality content and keyword rich links back to your site, you are onto a winner.

When dealing with press releases for SEO purposes, you have to remove the traditional image of wanting to get featured in papers and magazines. Online press releases do indeed get viewed by journalists, but the likelihood is your press release is not going to be of the quality or “news worthiness” to get into the press. But, if you get your company name in lights across some of the major news sites and social sites and also some nice links back, the reason for press releases becomes quite apparent.

We use a mixture of free and paid for sources and obviously we do get more exposure for with our paid accounts, but even the free sources we use do benefit our clients.

Press release submission is simply another good and ethical way of getting traffic and attention heading towards your website, as long as you make sure your press release is of good enough quality and you are simply not adding more clutter and junk to the internet, it is well worth doing.