Coaching For Success
Set Your Web Site Up To Succeed Internationally
Mar 28th
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Get £50 off a website 10 point MOT. Use the Contact Us form on the top of this page for more details
******************************************************************************************************************1. BBC.co.uk
Regardless of where your internet business is located, being found by searchers on search engines anywhere in the world is important when it comes to expanding the reach of your business and possibly improving your financial situation.
Make It Easy For Searchers To Find You Globally
One thing that most people crave is information, so it’s not surprising that search engines attract so much traffic. Regardless of what type of business you run (informational, blog, e-commerce), it’s important to appeal to searchers across as many search engines as possible by researching trends and the keywords used in searches.
But, since the internet has no boundaries, it’s equally important to understand that there’s tremendous global potential for your business. So, instead of just targeting the audience and topics associated with your particular geographic location, you should also look at international news and trends and the kinds of information people are searching for, and research keywords relevant to those topics. In this way, you can get your brand exposed to potential customers worldwide.
Sources Of Global Information
To find what’s causing a buzz on the worldwide (literally) web, here are some sites that will provide you with sources of information on various global topics, including entertainment, politics, news, social trends, sport, etc., giving you ideas for creating content and describing your products to expand your reach to an international audience.
These sites can provide valuable data and insights into keywords and phrases being searched for throughout the world, enabling you to craft your web site’s content to transcend global boundaries and cultures. So, let’s take a look at these resources and how they can benefit you and your business.
1. BBC.co.uk
The BBC is a fantastic source of global news and entertainment information, and, while the majority of the traffic comes from the UK, it also has a massive worldwide following.
2. Reuters.com
Another great news source that you can access by browsing the tabs and using a translation option to find out what the hottest trends are.
3. Twitter.com
One of the world’s most popular web sites, this is a great source for news and to find out what the latest hot topics are. To find out what’s happening elsewhere, use the “Trends” option sorted by region and country.
4. Blogger.com and Tumblr.com
While tricky to navigate and find what you want, both these sites are well respected and highly trafficked by the international community. Setting up a blog is easy on these sites and will get your content in front of a sizable international audience.
5. Reddit.com
This site is a bit offbeat and humorous but again has a good-sized international audience and provides sortable categories for politics, news, etc., making it useful for identifying trends.
6. CNN.com
Another great news source, popular mainly in North America, but CNN International is useful to check international trends and CNN’s Facebook page can give you a good idea of what’s important to your network.
Using these resources can help you extend the reach of your internet business internationally by capitalising on the trends that are popular amongst the international community.
A UK internet business coach will work with you to establish your business’s presence internationally through the use of the above resources along with many others you may not be aware of.
Analysing Key Performance Indicators Is Essential To Web Site Health
Mar 25th
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Get £50 off a website 10 point MOT. Use the Contact Us form on the top of this page for more details
******************************************************************************************************************4. Page And Traffic Totals
As an internet business owner, it’s important you know whether or not the effort you’re putting into your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies is paying off.
In order to do that, you need to look at certain key performance indicators (KPI), but the question then is, “Which ones do you look at?”. Good question – here are some of the more important KPIs you should monitor.
What’s The Goal When Looking At KPIs?
It’s important to recognise that the main goal when looking at KPIs is to find out what’s working on your site and in which areas there is room for improvement. Through analysing KPIs, you’ll discover useful data as your site improves and moves closer to the desired finished product. This data should then be shared throughout your organisation to help improve communication and decision-making at all levels.
The good news is you don’t need to be an expert in analytics to be able to understand and take full advantage of these KPIs. Even though it would be helpful to understand analytics, reports are generally available that will provide most, if not all, of the information needed.
A Look At Essential KPIs
The analytics used may vary by organisation, so it’s possible different KPIs will be used to measure how well different web sites are performing and all the following may not be applicable, so that should be borne in mind.
1. Average Number and Type of Keywords per Page
This KPI can help you discover whether or not you’re taking full advantage of “long tail” keywords. It’s also essential to explore further to find what your users’ interests are and what they are searching for, along with the conversion rates of the top-ranking keywords.
2. New Visitors / User Loyalty
You can learn about the organic traffic coming to your site and its characteristics, including the percentage or rate of new visitors, visitor type by keyword, etc.
3. Average Length Of Visit And Visit Duration
These are both excellent metrics when examining the natural/organic traffic coming to a web site. Knowing which pages of your site get the shortest length of stay will show you SEO opportunities for improvement.
4. Page And Traffic Totals
These are the simplest and most obvious indicators, as well as some of the most revealing. The health of a web site in SEO terms can be determined by the number of pages ranked by and being found in search engines, indicating the overall exposure of a web site.
5. Bounce Rate per Search Engine By Keyword
Knowing the bounce rate for the various keywords on your site can show how effective keyword analysis had been and also provide insight into the demographics of your visitors.
6. Length of Keyword Queries
If you know the number of keywords used in users’ queries, you can tailor your site to take advantage of that type of long-tail search. Also, if you see a trend towards longer keyword searches resulting in more traffic, that indicates a tendency towards more long-tail queries, so it’s safe to assume your site’s performing well for those types of queries.
7. Pages And Categories That Receive Most Traffic
This is a vital metric for SEO success, since knowing which sections of your web site receive the most traffic and which receive the least shows you what’s working and what’s not as far as SEO is concerned. If an area is receiving little or no traffic, that’s an indication that more work needs to be done to ensure users find that area; if an area is doing well as far as traffic goes, you should look at ways to expand that particular area.
These are important KPIs to analyse, but there are many others that may also be appropriate for your internet business, depending on the type of business you run.
It’s important to track how well your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts are going, and a UK internet marketing consultant can provide you the analytical skills you need to use these metrics to maximum effect.
Advanced Link Development Strategies To Improve Your Search Engine Rankings
Mar 23rd
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Get £50 off a website 10 point MOT. Use the Contact Us form on the top of this page for more details
******************************************************************************************************************Tracking Your Link Development Efforts
We’ve already discussed the importance of building external links to your internet business‘s web site, and we can’t emphasise that enough when it comes to improving your search engine optimisation (SEO) results.
Having discussed some basic steps to take to get started with the new process known as link development, it’s time to look at some more advanced strategies to move your link building efforts into high gear.
Just to recap the reason for this new approach. The search engines, and Google in particular, are now looking for more natural, organic links that are of high quality rather than just any links to any sites. It’s now about deep link building rather than just link building, so let’s look at more advanced ways of doing so.
Powerful Techniques For Developing Links
The tactics discussed here may take more effort, but are the best way to develop high value links that will reward the effort extended now and for a long time in the future.
1. Build A Widget
This technique is extremely powerful as building a widget is fairly simple, but getting that widget adopted on a large scale is the tricky part. Your widget must offer a strong value proposition such that thousands of web site owners decide to add your widget to their web sites, but this is complicated by the fact that you’re competing for advertising space and web site real estate with such powerful players as Google Adsense.
2. Information Graphics, Or Infographics
An infographic is a visual representation of data or knowledge or information that is used to explain a complex issue in more simple visual terms. In other words, it needs to be useful as well as informative and/or entertaining in such a way that it has the potential to go viral and be widely adopted by your peers.
Tracking Your Link Development Efforts
Once you embark on your link development campaign, it’s important to keep track of how your efforts are going so you can see what’s working and what’s not and double your efforts in the areas that are working and abandon, or, at least, reduce those that aren’t.
Let’s look at some ways to track your efforts:
1. Google Webmaster
The tools offered within Google Webmaster have grown and improved in proportion with Google itself. Practically all SEO efforts can be tracked, including internal and external links, click-through data, visits and keyword ranking. Some of the most important features include:
- Site performance evaluation
- Monitoring external links
- Sitemap submission
- Tracking crawl errors
- Monitoring internal links
- Tracking duplicate Title and Meta Tags
- Traffic and revenue projections based on search query analysis
2. Open Site Explorer
This tool provides information on how your link portfolio is shaping up (your link graph), your site’s trust ranking and your anchor text distribution.
a) Anchor Text Distribution
This can provide you with a benchmark of how your site compares to other sites when it comes to keyword-specific anchor text links pointing back to your site as compared to your competitors.
b) Link Graph
The tool will show you updates to your external followed links, which you can then use to plot your own link graph, showing you graphically how your external link efforts are working.
It should be obvious by now that link building has changed and will no doubt continue to change as search engines look to optimize their users’ experience. But, one thing that hasn’t changed (and shows no sign of doing so) is the importance of high-quality external links to your internet business, so take the above link development steps and watch your rankings start to improve.
Check with a UK internet marketing consultant for all the help you need to formulate and execute a successful link development campaign.
Take Advantage Of The Tremendous Opportunity That Is Video
Mar 21st
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Get £50 off a website 10 point MOT. Use the Contact Us form on the top of this page for more details
******************************************************************************************************************Suggestions To Make The Most Of Video
Publishing videos is currently one of the most powerful methods of promoting an internet business, and should be a part of every online business owner’s search engine optimisation (SEO) arsenal.
But, despite the praise heaped on the use of video to improve search engine rankings and as a powerful promotional tool, both in these columns and throughout internet marketing circles in general, a recent report by SundaySky, a provider of online video solutions, has some pretty startling revelations regarding the use (or lack thereof) of video as a marketing force.
Top E-Commerce Sites Fail To Take Full Advantage Of Video
SundaySky’s report, based on data from the fourth quarter of 2010, shows that almost half of the world’s top 50 online retailers failed to make the most of the opportunity presented by video.
Despite the fact that some had started to add video to their sites, most had failed to take full advantage of the tremendous opportunity that video represents. But, that needs to change during this current year if better results in overall web site performance is the goal, and it should be a primary goal for all online retailers.
The Benefits Of Using Video
The benefits of using video are manyfold, one of the main ones as far as e-tailers are concerned being improved conversion rates, resulting in more sales on a wider range of products, reduced number of returns and increased web site stickiness, amongst other benefits.
Another major benefit is that video ranks higher in search results than other online content, delivering much more traffic to e-commerce sites. In addition, YouTube has been ranked 2nd in search since 2008, and is the fourth property overall on the web, which shows how valuable video content is these days.
Suggestions To Make The Most Of Video
What is evident from the report by SundaySky is that e-commerce business owners should be taking full advantage of video to drive more traffic to their web sites.
In order to do so, there are several steps online retailers should take:
- increase the scale of their videos to include all their product offerings
- look beyond YouTube for syndicating videos; publish videos on platforms such as Facebook
- apply simple SEO strategies such as video sitemaps and proper embedding
Although we’ve been referring to e-commerce web site owners here, increased use of video on their web sites would be advisable for all internet business owners.
For expert advice on the optimum use of video on your web site, consult a UK internet business coach.
New Link Building Strategies For Better Search Engine Rankings
Mar 17th
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Get £50 off a website 10 point MOT. Use the Contact Us form on the top of this page for more details
******************************************************************************************************************2. Appropriate Use Of Anchor Text
Building links to your internet business‘s web site is as important as ever for your search engine optimisation (SEO) results. But, it’s no longer enough to just add multiple links from any old web sites to boost your site’s search engine rankings.
That’s because the search engines are now devoting a lot more time and energy to differentiating between natural (or organic) links and those built solely for the sake of adding a link.
Link building must also move on, just as the search engines are doing, so building deep links via link development is the new strategy for link building.
Link Development For Quality Links
Link development is a major advance on link building, which is all about acquiring links (pretty much any links), the more the better, whereas link development is all about acquiring organic backlinks via a strategy of organic growth.
Here are a few guidelines to use in developing high quality backlinks that are of value to the search engines.
1. Link Placement Is Important
- Placing links within the actual content is better than placing them within the footer or as part of your blogroll.
- Placing links on the left side of a web page is better than placing them on the right, since the left side supposedly gets indexed first.
2. Appropriate Use Of Anchor Text
- Be careful about using the same keywords repeatedly within anchor text, as such overuse will cause red flags to be raised within the search engines as a sign of non-organic link building.
3. Commenting On Blogs
- Posting comments that are spammy is a waste of everybody’s time and could get you banned
- If blogs have a great influence on your market, you should participate actively in blogs regardless of whether the links are follow or no-follow, because the more active you are, the more beneficial to your web site and your brand.
Improve Your SEO With Better Links
Building links is still an important facet of any search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, but the emphasis is now more on quality than quantity. If you follow the above steps, you’ll be well on your way to developing a valuable portfolio of high quality links that will help improve your search engine rankings.
As an internet business owner, this new link development technique will help you acquire better links that will add to the value of your web site as far as the search engines are concerned.
A UK internet business coach has the expertise you need to establish your link development programme, so contact one today and watch your search engine rankings improve rapidly.
