Top five tips for improving the ranking of your website

Particularly in the current climate, not all business can afford to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars to marketing or specialist SEO agencies to improve the ranking of their websites. 

However there are some simple steps businesses can take which will help drive your website up the search engines. 

1. Make sure all your products and services are described in depth.
Google's search engine works on a very simple question and answer model. You type in what you want and Google returns the websites that best match your search. Therefore your website needs to include all the names and various terms (keywords) that describe your products and services. Google also likes to see your products and services described and worded naturally, with lots of support information that relates to that content. 

2. Add new content regularly.
If you read the newspaper every day and it reported the same news stories week after week, you would never buy it. View your website in the same way. Generally speaking Google ranks websites that update their content regularly higher than those that do not. Why? Because Google wants to present 'current' content to its searchers. New content may include such things as better product or service descriptions, company news, market news, new clients, new projects, case studies, testimonials, guides, video, photo gallery, hints & tips, articles..I think you get the picture! 

3. Generate some inbound links to your website.
Why create inbound links? Because Google interprets this as somebody else endorsing the quality of your website, which is a big thumbs up. Getting a link from another website to yours can be easy, but unfortunately these tend to be the ones that don't carry any value. Links can generated from lots of websites, including suppliers, customers, industry associations, industry magazines, industry news, industry directories / portals, industry article and general directory and article. 

There are also many different ways to achieve the link. With a directory it might simply be a case of adding your company details, which is why they don't often carry any value. With suppliers you might want to write a press release on a recent project endorsing their products. With a customer you could write a press release celebrating your longstanding relationship. With industry sites you may wish to offer your services to blog and comment on certain topics. When you create a link within an article, where possible try to link from a keyword to the relevant page on your website. You may have to pay for some of your links, particularly in things like industry news websites or general news websites. If the website has a reasonably high page rank, then this is certainly worth considering. 

4.Create a blog.
As illustrated in point 2, Google gives credit to websites that update their content regularly. Create a blog on your website that enables you to add comments and news information on what's going on in your business on a regular basis. 

5.Create links within your website.
Google likes to see websites that are well structured and which help visitors navigate through the site effectively. Within the wording of your website, create links to other pages where people might wish to go for more information. If you are in an extremely competitive marketplace, deploying these tactics alone is unlikely to get your website to the top of page one for your target keywords. While the ranking of your website will certainly improve, if your aiming for the top of Google you may require the support of an SEO agency.

Special thanks to Northern Light Media in the UK for these helpful search engine optimization tips. For more information visit http://www.northernlightmediauk.com 

Understanding Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO is about building online authority, digital reputation, and trust for your website. The quantity, quality, and relevance of the links that are attached to the website determine the quality of search result rankings.

When initiating a campaign to improve rankings for a leading brand, the focus was on off-page optimization and building authority for the site.  However, the existing authority was entirely dependent on the links that had already been established.  Enter "off page SEO".  The primary step to improve rankings and traffic was through the development of quality inbound links.

One must realize that off-page is more than link building. The way you diversify authority for your website, is through conversations people are having about brands, references they are making, and diversifying your link portfolio to establish your authority.

Link Building is the practice of building inbound links to create compelling authority around any item that is shared.

Compelling Content is the best way to optimize your website and other digital assets. Without compelling content it's hard to get a link building audience. The best way to earn relevant links from other sites to your site is through the development of compelling visuals, descriptive, and design, that excite others and are worth of being cross-promoted by other sites. As an example, something as simple as a chocolate chip cookie recipe or cupcakes are great items that can be used to promote food ingredients for the likes of Kraft and other major manufacturers. 

Co-Marketing is another opportunity for off-page SEO.  The effort of cross-promoting and marketing is a way of networking, and building relationships to create community.  When you can work with other companies to jointly market each other’s content, products, or services, you expand your reach and website authority. Co-marketing is similar to guest posting. A person has access to the other company’s networks, prospect, leads, or services, which ultimately increase reach. 

Social Media hasn't been on the radar as part of off-page SEO but it is now. The criteria around off page SEO is to build your reputation one step at a time and build community. The reputation created on social media is instant, and the authority established through various credentials can provide significant lift to your website authority in the eyes of Google and other major search engines. 

Public Relations or Public Affairs needs to be an integral part of your off-page SEO as well.  By having a well planned PR campaign that is optimized in such a way that it is easily shared can dramatically improve exposure. Positioning your communication as a message that needs to be shared as a fact or announcement is a powerful tool.  For example, if Kraft is expanding within the range of cookies, and adding more healthy cookies, it would really help to create sustainable messages around the sweet, and healthy benefits of the food, cookies.

In the above example, the quality of search result rankings would not be determined by the recipe of the food products that Kraft plans to promote, but by the publicity of social media efforts as others share recipes and tout health benefits. 

Using effective messaging an positioning can help to dramatically improve off-page SEO.  Whether you are creating original content that is easily shared or pushing messages via public relations, the more quality links you are able to generate to your site, the better!


Guest post from Karishma Sinha. An eye on consumers, and passionate about analytics and research tools that can make marketer stay educated about his or her creative instincts. I have worked in PepsiCo, and Quest International, managing product innovation for Snack products. In 2006, transitioned to the marketing services, and consulting world. Am a graduate from St.Xaviers, Mumbai, Master's from Symbiosis Pune, and a Full time MBA from Duke University, The Fuqua School of Business, North Carolina. 

How to Conduct Effective Keyword Research

One of the most important steps a small business owner should take when starting a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign is to make sure you are targeting the right keywords with your content, blogs and press releases.

The best way to do this (that’s also at no cost) is using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool was build to help advertisers doing Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) through Google AdWords filter and pick more effective terms to place in PPC campaigns; and since PPC and SEO are often highly correlated, it is also a valuable tool for researching SEO keywords.

Google’s keyword tool let’s anyone with or without an AdWords account expand and filter relevant keywords quickly.

To start, type in 5-10 keywords and phrases that describe the product or service that you want to rank for:

If you are a local business, try adding the following modifiers before and after certain keywords:

●     Zip code

●     City

●     State spelled out

●     State abbreviation

●     Country

●     County

●     Region

●     City, State

●     “in” city

●     “local”

Once you have a solid list, type in the capcha and search.

At the top of the results you will find detail on each of the keywords that you typed in; below that Google will expand your list and provide up to 100 keyword ideas related to the terms entered. If you are just learning SEO some of these results may be surprising to you.

Next, click the “Local Monthly Searches” header to sort both lists by the average amount of times the term has been searched in your country or language.

Then scan the list for keywords keywords that:

●     are highly relevant to your business

●     contain a low to medium competition ranking

●     have a sizable number of local monthly searches

The competition ranking is speaking to the competitiveness of the term as it relates to PPC advertising, but it can be generally related to SEO as well.

If you would like to save your favorite keywords, check them off and click the download drop down menu followed by the selected option.  This will let you save your checked keyword list in a variety of formats.

Keyword research works best if you do several of these types of searches, constantly washing the keyword list that you build on subsequent expansions.

Once done you can then either use the final list of 5-10 keywords as the ones you are going to target, or use an SEO-specific tool to check the SEO competition for related terms. SEOMoz (paid) and the SEO SERP plugin for Google Chrome are great options for this.

To learn more about how to build an SEO foundation, check out Grovo’s expert series with Zach Ciperski, VP, Coffee For Less, Director of SEO, Elite SEM.

In this video series Zach covers a variety of topics, including:

●     A history of SEO

●     Choosing the right keywords

●     Onsite SEO optimizations

●     Creating SEO friendly content

●     Basic link building

●     Social media SEO

●     Video SEO

●     User experience and SEO

●     Mobile SEO

Special Thanks to Nick Narodny, Co-founder, SVP of Business Training for Grovo for sharing his expertise with the readers of the Marketing Blog!


See you at the top,
Mike Fleischner