The Importance Of Having A Sitemap On Your Website

Many site owners and webmasters often underestimate the importance of having a sitemap, both an online version for users and an XML version for Google. If you have never considered why having a sitemap is important, read on to find out more about these underrated additions to your SEO techniques.

Sitemaps are one of the most effective ways to help Google to understand about your site, and although it does not necessarily lead to a quicker indexing, it really is proven to make sure your site is indexed in a much more efficient way.

Most SEO and Web Design companies can generate sitemaps for you, whether you have an existing site or would like one to accompany your new site, we can take care of this. They can offer to generate both HTML and XML versions of the sitemap, and also help you to submit this to Google and in particular the Webmaster Tools, to make sure your site is doing everything it can to help the search engines index it comprehensively.

Most will use a state of the art program to generate the sitemaps, and can handle many thousands of pages.

What Is A Sitemap?

To give a very basic example, a sitemap is simply a list of pages on your website.

Creating and submitting a sitemap helps make sure that Google and other major search engines knows about all of the pages on your website, including URLs that may not be discoverable by the search engines normal crawling process.

Click here to view Clear Web Services sitemap to help you better understand.

Why Do I Need Sitemap?

A quote from Google’s own webmaster advice reads:

Sitemaps provide additional information about your site to Google, complementing our normal methods of crawling the web. We expect they will help us crawl more of your site and in a more timely fashion, but we can’t guarantee that URLs from your Sitemap will be added to the Google index. Sites are never penalized for submitting Sitemaps.

You can read the full article by clicking here.

Anything that gives you some kind of help to make sure the major search engines index your site is well worth doing, with Google in particular looking to see a sitemap on the website to make sure the site is conforming to accessibility rules.

If you think of SEO as a big pie made up of hundreds, if not thousands of slices, the more slices you manage to get, the more of the pie you will have, which in SEO terms basically means the more things you do, little or large, will try to make sure you pick up higher percentage of search engine traffic.

Using Article Submission As A Way To Build Traffic And Exposure

Article Submission is often over looked by many companies, associations and websites, simply due to the amount of time the process takes. There are many reasons why writing good quality articles and submitting them to some of the leading article submission sites will help you and your site.

You need to write an informative article, without trying to advertise or market your products in a direct way and you then need to submit them to many of the leading Article websites, of which finding the best takes a long time as there are literally thousands to choose from.

Even though the process is time consuming, article submission is a fantastic tool when it comes to generating traffic, link backs and interest in your company or website. Google loves content, content is the one thing that is guaranteed to increase your power in the search engine, which is why writing articles and submitting them to high profile article sites is a must, it really can pay dividends.

A good SEO company can help you to make the most of the free and paid article submission services on the Internet.

For a fixed or monthly fee, they can make sure your articles conform to the majority of the article submission sites we use guidelines and also do the hard work of submitting them to these sites as well.

Why Submit Articles?

There are many reasons why writing good quality articles and submitting them to some of the leading article submission sites will help you and your site.

The first reason is traffic. If you have written something that is of good quality and interests people and have attached a link to your site, the readers are naturally going to want to find out more about you and your site and also hope to find more content from the same author, if they like what you have written. Think of it like your favourite author, how many times do you check Amazon or the local library for new releases, if its like me, you will do this quite often looking for the next release. Good online content is really no different.

Another reason to write articles is to gain exposure as an expert in your field. If you were selling washing machines, you would write about the best washing machines, how to make them last longer and top brands. After a few articles, people would get to know you for dealing with washing machines and you then become an authoritative figure for that subject. The more you write, the more exposure you as a writer will get, which will in turn offer more exposure for your website.

If the article site allows it, and most do, you will also be allowed to post a link back to your site. Google will then start seeing links back to your site on content written by you which is of relevance to your own site. If we take the washing machine example, on all of your articles you include a link to your site selling washing machines. Google will then see this as a relevant and authoritative link, helping your search engine ranking placements (SERPs) as well.

Making Press Releases Work For Your SEO Campaigns

Just as press releases are a great way of picking up free offline marketing and exposure, they can also be an effective traffic generator online, and most SEO companies can help you to make the most of the free and paid press release services on the Internet.

For a fixed or monthly fee, you can make sure your press releases conform to the majority of the press release sites we use guidelines and also do the hard work of submitting them to these sites as well.

What is a press release?

Quite simply, a press release is a news story, which is normally written in the third party with the hope that it is of enough news worthiness content to be picked up by editors, journalists and reporters and then published in various publications.

This slightly differs for online releases, where the main extra incentive is that you can also normally add links and extra text to be found on the Internet, which means even if your story is not used, you can still use them to generate extra traffic, exposure and link juice.

Your press release can be about a company announcement, new product, exciting new project or simply telling the world about the new ideas you are coming up, it really can be about anything but it has to be informative and news worthy if you want it to be effective and to drive traffic and attention to your website and business.

Tips For Your Press Release

● Always make sure that the information you are publishing is newsworthy and not just pure marketing content.

● Make sure your audience knows the story is for them, so write the press release as if you were a reader.

● Make sure the first 20 words or the first two sentences of your release are effective, as they are often the most important and eye catching.

● Spelling And Grammar – Make sure you spell check, grammar check and get someone else to double check your press release, as poor English and lots of mistakes will reflect badly on you company.

● Try to use facts where possible, anything to back up your new story or press release.

● Don’t release the article until you feel it really is at a stage where its worth the attention of readers and editors.

● Add as much Contact information as possible: Who to Contact, postal address, phone, fax, email and your web site address.

How Do You Know If Your SEO Campaign Has Been A Success?

Measuring the success of an SEO campaign is sometimes very hard to do. Some clients or business want to see more sales, some want more traffic, some want sign ups and some just want to improve the length of time people spend on their site. To answer the title question is a very difficult thing to do, as successful takes on many shapes and forms when it comes to SEO.

When you begin an SEO campaign, be it with an SEO consultancy or even on your own, you should always begin by asking yourself a question, what do I want to get from the campaign? This is the only way that you will be able to judge how successful it has been at the end or at anytime during the life of the campaign, so it is pretty vital if you want to know if your methods are working or if your money has been well spent.

There are many different measures that you can base your success on, but this all depends on your initial goal or goals, as if you do not work out what you want to achieve, how can you possibly know when you have achieved it? You also need to work out in the early days what your focus is going to be on. Is it going to be on generally improving the SEO of the whole site, or are you going to just focus on particular areas, strengthen them and then move onto other areas on the next campaign.

As mentioned, there are many ways to measure your success, but you need to work out why you are embarking on your SEO journey, and some of the major reasons are listed below –

Increase Sales – Some may say this is why anyone, business or organisation uses an SEO campaign, and few would disagree. If you are a business, you want more sales, and therefore you will probably judge your SEO campaigns success on how many extra sales you have achieved. Sometimes this is not realistic, as even the best SEO campaign in the world might not lead to more sales, as it could well be the price, product or something else that stops the visitor purchasing.

Increase Traffic – An increase in traffic is what any SEO consultancy wants to achieve, but its important that it’s good traffic, and by this, we mean it is traffic that is looking for what you are offering. Any company can double its traffic, but if these people are not your kind of visitor, then an increase in traffic is not necessarily a good benchmark of a decent SEO campaign. We would rather send ten related visitors to our clients, than 100 non related, even though it might look better on a graph!

Extra Exposure – If you are a new company, you will sometimes use an SEO campaign to gain exposure, by the use of press releases, article submissions, link building and social bookmarking. Some of our clients simply want us to get their name out on the internet rather than build X amount of traffic, so this can be another way to measure your success.

Increase Revenue – Along the same lines of sales, but for some companies they are just looking to increase general revenue, which might come from sales, advertising revenue and other passive incomes from the website. Again, measuring an SEO campaigns success can have its difficulties, but overall if your revenue increases, you are going to be pretty pleased.

Key Focus On One Area – We have clients who have asked for a 6 month SEO campaign to focus on the launch of a new product or the release of a new venture. Instead of concentrating on the whole site, they have specifically asked us to focus on just one area, which means that although the general SEO will improve at the same time, the main focus is to drive traffic and increase exposure for just one area.

So, as you can see, there are many different measurements when it comes to basing the success of your campaign, but it is vital you set out your goals before you set off on the sometimes rocky journey. Sometimes, you will want to achieve lots of things, sometimes only a couple, but know what you want to get out of your campaign is the only real way of knowing how well it really went, and what to do differently for next time.

All About Blogs And Why Your Website Needs One

Blogs are becoming increasingly important when it comes to having regularly updated content in a way in which Google and other search engines seem to enjoy at the moment. Having a blog should be a big part of your natural SEO building process, as it has undoubted power when it comes to increasing traffic and content.

Add to this readers and users can add your blog posts to their RSS readers and comments on your posts, you begin to see why blogs are becoming the latest addition to the must have family on your website.

A blog is a web site or a part of a website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions and comments by one or multiple users, adding posts to categories and assigning tags to each post to explain exactly what the post is about.

If you already have a website, you can help increase and build upon your traffic and content building by installing, setting up using your blog, including finding and installing the many additions, or plug-ins, that you can have on your blog to make it not only easier to maintain and use, but to also help with making your blog even more important for SEO purposes.

Many SEO companies and Web Design Companies can now actually build whole websites based on blogs, meaning you have full control without the need of an expensive CMS system, and the user will never know that your site is based on a blog rather than the traditional html or php web pages coded offline.

This is by far the most cost effective way to have a website if you do not have the experience or tools to code and maintain web pages offline, and blogs are increasingly easier to spider than traditional websites it would seem.

Having a blog, whether as an addition to your website or a website that is actually a blog is seemingly a must have. Due to the way Wordpress and other blogs get indexed and spidered, the amount of SEO power they offer is astounding, which is why many companies recommend to any client a blog is a necessity rather than just a luxury.

Although having a blog means you must be adding regular content, else not only will your customers notice this, but so will most of the major search engines.

Once you have blog, you then need to think about blog submissions to all of the RSS directories and blog directories, such as Technorati to make sure the world is viewing your blog. You can also find a range of plugIns for your blog to make the SEO process a lot easier and smoother, with some fantastic methods aimed at making your blog more appealing to the Internet world.

Understanding Link Building And How You Need To Use It For Your Own Website

Many years ago, linking was probably the most important thing you could do when it comes to SEO. These days, less emphasis and importance is placed on links when it comes to the Google factor, but it is still very important, albeit possibly in a different kind of way.

Linking is very important, as we mentioned, probably not as important is used to be, but it still needs to play a big part of your overall SEO strategy. Google still rates links pointing to your site depending on relevance, content and page rank, so it is very important that you choose where you ask for your link to be placed, even down the page on which the link is placed.

There are a few types of links, but the ones below are probably some of the most important types when it comes to link building campaigns for your site.

One Way – One way links are pretty much what they say on the tin. It is where Site A links to you, but you offer no link back to them. This is often found with directories and articles or press releases.

Reciprocal – This is often called a link exchange or link swap. It is basically where you link to Site A and they link back to you. If you are doing reciprocal linking, try to make sure the sites you are swapping links with are relevant and have some kind of existence.

On-Site – On Site links are links on your site pointing or leading to other pages on your site. These are basically the links you use on your site for navigation.

When embarking on a linking campaign, we sit down with you and work out what you are looking to achieve. We then plan a strategy and begin the work needed to achieve your aims.

It is also important that your links are relevant. For example, if you ran a golf website, your links will be of a much higher value if you have links back from other golf sites and golf related sites. These might include golf directories, golf property sites and golf clubs. If the link pointing to your site is of relevance, i.e. it is related to your theme, the link will be considered of higher value by Google and other search engines.

Link building also has to be done naturally and over a period of time. If you suddenly embark on a quick campaign and end up with a thousand links in Google within a couple of weeks, Google will think this is very unnatural and you may well be penalised for this. All of our campaigns are spread over a period of time, we only try to add to so many links in one go and we feel this makes the campaign look as natural as possible to Google. It is very important to see link building as a long term project and make sure you are trying to get links back in small goes, as trying to cheat the system by buying or adding thousands of links will only back fire.

A great way of getting one way links is to embark on a linking campaign using directories. It is important to try and get links from established and respected directories, but even new directories are usually worth having a link in. Link swaps are nowhere near as effective as they used to be, but swapping links with established and relevant sites is still worth doing.

Paid links have caused a little bit of stir over the past few years. When Page Rank was at its most important, people were buying thousands of links to try and exploit the algorithm, and as such Google has now tried to close this loophole, and quite rightly so in our opinion. However, it is important to remember that paid links can still be beneficial if used effectively.

Charging For Content – Can It Really Work On The Internet?

As the internet has rapidly evolved from being an information portal to an ecommerce haven, the age old debate about charging for content that was once free has re-emerged, with the news that Rupert Murdoch has been considering charging users to access newspapers online. With the idea obvious to make money, it would seem only fair that if you have to buy a paper in the “real world” you should also pay to read online, but does everyone agree?

Any company that is considering charging for access to content faces a wealth of issues when actually looking at the implications of doing this. We have explored some of these issues below, but generally, this decision to step into the world of charging people to access something that was once free, could lead to devastating implications for the business.

Loss of Readers / Customers – It is fair to say the regular and loyal followers of your publication will probably pay to continue reading if you set the amount to be worthwhile to the consumer. But, you can also bet that the majority of people will simply just find the information elsewhere. You will probably end up diverting your customers onto other publications, ones they have never considered before and run the large possibility of losing that reader or consumer for the foreseeable future.

Google Can’t See It – The only way to stop people seeing the content for free is to hide it behind some sort of secured administration area, where only people that have paid can access it. Now, if you and I can not see the content unless we pay, not can Google and other engines, so you begin to lose the amount of content being indexed by the engines, you then start to lose search ranking placements and the overall consequence of this is your visitor numbers will drop rapidly. Content is the king for Google, and if it cant see it, then how can it possibly know how much you are releasing?

Advertising Revenue Falls – The less readers or visitors you have, the less advertising revenue you will earn, because the majority of advertisers set their budgets on the amount of exposure their advert will get. So if this drops, then its only fair to expect the advertiser will not pay you as much money to be on the site. This is also the same for Adsense revenue, if you have fewer visitors, you will have fewer clicks and thus lose money through this avenue as well.

Content Receives Less Exposure – Content on the internet becomes a massive hit in only one way, people spreading the word about it by blogging about it, posting about it, sending links to their friends and basically social networking measures. If this can not happen due to the content only being accessible to paid readers, you stand no chance of your latest publication finding its way around the internet and increasing your exposure.

There are times however when charging for content can work, and indeed has worked. Publishers of EBooks, resources and other types of publications do successful charge for access to their content, but whether this would work for say an online newspaper is debatable. People will pay for a well written guide to something they are interested in, but whether they would pay for something that they could probably find else where for free is the main issue.

In 2005, the NYTimes.com website started charging to access parts of its content. Two years later in September 2007, they decided to drop the charge and once again make the website free to access all areas, and this was at a time when people had more money and a freedom to spend, unlike today. And they only charged around $50 a year to access the website, which is a negligible amount when you think how much you would pay for a daily newspaper in publication. The report started that they project had met its targets, but when compared to the forecasted growth in online advertising revenue, it made the project unfeasible.

So, if publications do start to think about charging for access to the content in 2009 or 2010, for something that has always been traditionally free, it will be very interesting to see the effects on not only the said publication, but also the internet as a whole.

Understanding On Page Optimisation And Why Its Vital To Get Right

One of the biggest things you can do or an SEO company can do for your existing or future website is to make sure each page is fully optimised for all of the major search engines, especially Google.

There are many factors involved with on page optimisation and if you manage to get all of them to be effective and optimised, this will have dramatic results on your search engine placements and therefore your website traffic, and hopefully conversions.

The process is very intense and somewhat complicated, but a general idea of what is involved in on page optimisation can be found below.

You need to look at the title of each page. The title is the wording you see in the blue bar of your browser, so for example, if you look at the top of your browser now, you will see the title text. Bearing in mind this is one of the first things Google or any engine sees when spidering your website, you need to try and identify each page and make each title unique, descriptive and worthwhile for the engines.

Try to include your business name and / or product and also a few keywords.

If you were selling washing machines, you could do something like:

Bobs Washing Machines | Discount Hotpoint, Bosch and Zanussi Washer Dryers

This would mean you manage to get the keywords for washing machines, some of the major brands and also washer dryers as well, which are all very searchable words in the search engines. Do not over do it though, limit the amount of words in your title as much as possible and never look to put lots of keywords or unrelated keywords into your title tag.

You also need to look at your other meta tags, including the description and keywords. The description tag is often used to display the search result description in Google and other engines, whereas the keywords are still a factor in search results, albeit probably not as influential as a few years ago.

Also look at your content. Has the content got a good level of keywords for that subject, is it well written, does it flow correctly and make sure you haven’t over stuffed the page with endless and pointless keywords. Google and few other search engines are very, very clever and you should never try to fool them or trick them, it will only backfire. Make sure all content is keyword rich, has good density and most importantly is well written.

Make sure all of your links and images have alt tags, as they are also a contributing factor in search engines as well.

There are many other things that you can successfully complete with when it comes to On Page Optimisation, and by looking at each page and making suggestions, you or your SEO company can help you to make sure your site is optimised for both the search engines and your customers, which sometimes can be a hard balance to strike.

Competitor Analysis – Why You Should Be Doing It For Your Business

Competitor analysis is not about spying, underhand tactics or being ruthless, it is simply about looking at your main competitors, working out what they do well and not so well and making sure you follow the same things that they are doing well and avoid doing things that are not being done quite so well.

Quite often, by looking at what your competitors are doing, you can quite often spot areas that they might not have exploited or areas of weaknesses that your company and / or website can take advantage of.

Most SEO consultancies offer a full competitor analysis report, once they have sat down with you and worked out for which products, services or keywords you are looking to perform for, they can then compile reports to suggest who your main competitors are, what they do well, how they are performing and then make suggestions based on this information to help you improve your website.

A good SEO company will look at many areas when undertaking this type of research and these include:

● In-depth look at the website
● Content
● Keywords
● Strengths of website
● Weaknesses of website
● Link building campaigns
● SERPs – how well they do in the search engines

They should also offer a lot more than is listed above, and can also work with you to make sure the type of research and analysis is related to exactly what you are seeking to know.

You can also complete most of this competitor analysis yourself, but you do have to remember it can be quite time consuming and you sometimes would benefit from specialist tools of the trade, that most SEO companies will be using when undertaking any kind of research.

Once you have this information, you can then identify suggestions as how to be more competitive and spot the areas that you feel you should be concentrating on and areas that you are maybe not making the most of. Any company, website or business can always learn from their competitors, as there are always so many things that you can improve on when it comes to running a successful business.

Understanding PPC (Pay Per Click) And CPC (Cost Per Click)

Pay Per Click or PPC is the process of using Google, MSN or Yahoo to pay for clicks or traffic received to your website, gaining extra exposure, but at a price (per click). Pay Per Click is also know as Cost Per Click or CPC by many people, but both titles equate to the same thing, paying for traffic for your website.

Most SEO companies can provide a number of monthly management plans for clients and customers wanting to pass on to us the management of their pay per click advertising, so no matter what your budget is, they can help you complete and achieve all of your goals and objectives and make your campaigns more efficient and effective.

What Is Pay Per Click?

Pay Per Click is the process of paying for every click you receive from a search engine, using their Sponsored Results, normally at the top of the search or to the top right hand side.

10% of clicks on a search engine are currently reported to be users clicking on the Pay Per Click results, so for every 100 searches and click throughs, 10 people will use the sponsored results, rather than the natural results.

For example, run a search for Washing Machines in Google.

The search results will have a light orange box at the top, with two or three results in, and then on the right hand side you will see a list of adverts, normally 7 or 10 to a page.

These are the Sponsored Results, and depending how much you bid for on a keyword, this is where your results would appear. The more you bid, the higher you rank.

PPC is an effective way of getting traffic to your website in the early months of it being live, and also a valuable marketing tool throughout the life span of the website. Just as you would probably pay for an advert in the news paper, you really should think about online advertising, and PPC is one of the most effective, as you control how much you spend and how you spend it.

Why Should I Pay For Traffic?

PPC is part or could be part of any online marketing or advertising. Most people spend money when it comes to offline advertising and the reason for doing this is obvious, increased exposure and therefore increased enquiries and sales.

PPC is not really any different. You are paying to get more exposure against thousands of other people doing the same. The nice thing with PPC is there are thousands of words and alternatives to any main keyword and you can assign the budget, and you can still get good results from being on the second or third page of the sponsored results.

If you are competing against thousands of others doing the same thing or offering the same service, or your site is quite new and still being indexed and dancing in the search engines, PPC is still an efficient and cost effective measure of driving traffic to you site. Many of the biggest companies in the world assign a PPC budget, as it really can be a useful measure to increase visits and sales, and we can help to make sure you get the best results, no matter what your budget is.

You can find more infromation about or PPC / CPC campaign management by clicking here.

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