When writing any copy for the web, it is important that the copy is semantically structured in a way that allows search engines to easily understand how your content is structured, what is important on that page and therefore, how to rank the information on the page.

What is semantic structure?

Semantic structure relates to the way that html tags are displayed on a given web page. This can be done manually by a web developer/web editor or in most cases, a website’s content management system will have features built into the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text box which work rather like a program such as Microsoft Word. This will allow you to do standard things such as making words bold or italics, but it should also help you to define the semantic structure of the page by applying header tags <h1 – h6> to indicate breaks and subsections in the copy.

How should copy be structured semantically?

Typically, most bits of content on the web will be copy. In and around that, you will also get things like video, images, infographics etc which help to add value to the copy and make it more shareable and engaging. When writing copy for the web, you should first identify the keywords and phrases that are relevant to the content you are producing (see previous post on keyword/phrase research). Once you have this list of words and phrases, it is important to include these not only in the copy, but also in the structure on the content you are producing.

Title tags

Most pages will begin with a title tag. This will usually be generated for you using your content management system and this gives you the title of the content you are producing. It is important to include keywords and phrases in the title tag as this is the information that appears in search engine results pages (SERPs), when the content is shared via social media and also at the top of your web browser. This is the most important tag for the search engines as it tells them in an instant what the page is about and therefore should be optimised with your phrases identified in your search phrase research.

Meta Description

The Meta Description used to be another key indicator to the search engines about what your content contained and again should be optimised with your search phrases. However, due to overkill by spammers and over-enthusiastic SEO companies, this is now much less relevant in your ranking. However, it is still very important in another sense - it is still displayed in the SERPs so can be used to encourage a higher clickthrough rate. If the meta description is empty, Google will use the first line of the content so if you can ask users to "We are the Country's leading stockists of X at very low prices. Visit us today!" it will be much more effective than "Welcome to our store. Feel free to browse, blah, blah, blah..."

Header tags

The next important thing to ensure you do is add the correct header tags <h> throughout the copy. Every web page should have a <h1> tag. This is usually (but not always) found at the very top of the document and can sometimes (but again not always) be a duplication of the title tag - however it is much more effective if this is unique. Google sees this as another key element on the page and you should ensure that you add relevant keywords and phrases into the <h1> tag.

When producing a copy heavy piece of content (anything over 200 words), it is important to break that down for two reasons: 1) it makes it easier for the user to pick out the information they are looking for and 2) it allows Google to see what you feel are the important elements on a page - which therefore affects rankings for the keywords that are in these header tags.

A lot of copywriters will typically use subheadings to break up large bits of copy which is great. One problem usually comes though when they simply use bold to identify the subheading. This is your opportunity to semantically structure the content and make Google aware of the important things contained within the next bit of copy. The addition of header tags should be done logically i.e. the first subheading should be identified with a <h2> tag. If there are any further subheadings within that section of copy, a <h3> tag should be used and so on. If you have a number of subheadings on a page that all carry the same weight, then <h2> tags should be used throughout. Never jump or miss out header tags as this will only confuse Google i.e. <h1> tag jump to a <h3> tag because it looks better when displayed on screen.  Visual presentation can should always be done separately; there is no excuse for not adhearing to a correct document structure.  It is the backbone of good content!

Why is it important to semantically structure copy?

By adding the relevant title tags and header tags, it allows you to highlight to Google the keywords and phrases you feel are important within that piece of content. Google adds weight to keywords and phrases located in title and header tags (more so than those that have just had bold applied to them although this does add some weight).

Additional semantics

In addition to the key area of header tags, you can also make sure that you apply the correct html tags for things such as bullet points. Many copywriters will replace bullet points with stars which is presentational mark-up but it is not semantic mark-up. Again bullet points help to break up copy and when marked-up correctly, also allow you to highlight keywords and phrases to search engines.

So, in conclusion, it is important for you to get the semantic structure of your copy right. At Digital Hothouse, we can help to make sure that all your content is structured in the right way and that you have optimised for the keywords you have identified.

A massively overlooked area of SEO can be a website’s URL structure and it is always one of the first things we look at here at Digital Hothouse. However there are also some pitfalls to avoid along the way and it is important not to get too hung up on creating the perfect URL, especially if you have a site that has been around for a number of years.

Do you need to change your URLs?

We are going to take a look at some of the reasons why you might want to change the way your URLs are structured and show how this can help with your SEO activity. We are also going to look at some of the potential pitfalls of changing your URL structure and how to combat these.

1. Long URLs

Do you have particularly long URLs on your site? It is a bit of a misconception that web browsers cannot detect overly long URLs, however it could be potentially damaging to the usability (and therefore the likelihood of a click through to your site) of your site as well as your ability to include relevant keywords which are detected by Google.

Other potential issues from long URLs include:

* Difficult to read in a web browser
* Could get cut off when cutting and pasting
* Could get cut off when sharing via social media
* Could dilute the strength of keywords

If you currently have long URLs on your site, it is important to look at how the folders are structured and therefore how the URLs are generated. It is also worth considering the length of your title tags if this is an issue on the site. If your URL is generated automatically from the URL, it may be worth considering a manual override using the URL box in your content management system (if you have an option, and if you don't you probably need a new CMS).

2. Dynamic URLs

Related to the length of your URL are dynamically generated URLs. These can often be found on e-commerce sites or any site that pulls in information from a database and basically they add a numerical reference to as the URL to identify that page.

Example:

http://www.mysite.com/store.php?=id89563936&style=10=session12344

This is common to URLs seen across the web and in this example, it could be something like a dress in a size 10 or something similar. So, what are the risks with dynamic URLs? These could be some of the potential issues:

* Contains no relevant keywords for SEO or the user's benefit
* Is difficult for the user to understand (which could lead to lower click throughs)
* Could lead to problems of duplicate URLs if there are a number of similar products in different sizes/colours etc
* They are long which incurs the same issues as raised in point 1

Setting up your site so that is pulls in relevant information about the products or service you offer is a far better way of generating URLs that mean something to the user. By pulling in product descriptions, it is likely that keywords will then form part of that URL. This can be difficult to do for certain types of site, however we can work with you to help ensure that the URLs generated by your site when you create a new page are user friendly. Sometimes you may find that the product descriptions that are pulled in by the CMS are too long and you end up with the same issues as identified in point 1.

1. 3. Keywords – URLs

When it comes to your URL, you can come across issues of either too many keywords or not enough. We have already looked at examples above where keywords are not included in dynamically generated URLs or carry little weight if they are found at the end of a long URL, however there are also issues if you attempt to keyword stuff your URLs.

Example:

http://www.mysite.com/keywords-keyword-keywords-keyword-keywords

Although Google is unlikely to enforce a huge penalty on you for this sort of behaviour, it will act as more of an indicator that this practice may also go on in your title tags, header tags and content and indicate that your site may be spammy.

Make sure you focus on identifying unique URLs that feature the main keywords identified for that peice of content. Ensuring that the title tags, header tags and copy all then support that keywords and other identified is crucial.

How should a URL be structured?

SEOMoz.org have produced a nice little cheat sheet to help you structure your URLs in a friendly way. You can see from the example that the structure is important and it is also helpful for usability if you separate the ‘path’ and ‘page’ information with hyphens. If your CMS does not do this automatically, you may have to enter the hyphens using the output uri function.

Issues of changing your URL?

So, now you know about how to structure your URLs in the correct way, what are the potential pitfalls of changing from your current structure:

* Your page has built up considerable link juice
* Your site becomes a warren of 301 redirects as you try for the perfect URL
* You permanently lose ranking because your new structure is no better than your old one

Make sure that the changes you are making are definitely for the better. If there is only going to be a marginal increase in the usability and SEO benefit of changing your URL, it may not be worth the time and effort. Having said that, there are many thousands of sites out there that would hugely benefits from a URL overhaul and if you think that could be your site, then drop us a line and we can see how we can help.

Following on from my previous post about the importance of providing context with any data that is produced, it would appear that eBay have fallen into the trap of doing just that. In a recent article published in the Guardian, it looked at a recently published report by eBay stating that Google Keyword advertising is a waste of money and that no one should be doing it anymore. Unfortunately, what eBay left out of the report was the context that surrounds their own use of Google Adwords and how it may differ from other companies who choose to advertise with Google.

Context

The report by eBay suggests that, "Results show that brand keyword ads [where companies purchase ads on searches for their own name] have no short-term benefits, and that returns from all other keywords are a fraction of conventional estimates,". They then applied this theory to their own site, removing paid ads from Microsoft and Yahoo but leaving them with Google. They noticed no discernible drop off in the number of visitors to their site, finding that most people got to their site organically.

One thing that needs to be made clear here though is that eBay is a massive, globally recognised brand. They are more than likely going to appear organically at the top or near the top of search engine results pages for many number of keyword searches. They have a strong brand and with it a strong reputation. They have little problem ranking for key terms relating to their business but what about the small to medium size companies out there?

Another thing missed in the report is the effect on Google Adwords Quality Score from Branded Search. Quality Score is the score that Adwords gives to your account, keywords and ad groups - branded search enhances account quality score which can in turn lower CPCs, and because branded terms have generally high click through rates and low CPCs they can bring a valuable boost to the account, at a relatively low cost.

Organic vs paid search

For small to medium size businesses, it can be extremely difficult to gain natural organic ranking for specific keywords. Appearing on page 10 of a Google search engine results page is neither here or there to these companies as they are never going to be found in those deepest, darkest depths. eBay on the other hand is unlikely to struggle to rank for their main keywords; they are a highly trusted and recognised brand.

Many small to medium enterprises rely on Google Adwords to generate click throughs, sales and possibly more importantly, brand awareness. It may be the case that a high proportion of Google users do not click on ads, however the $37 billion revenue generated from advertising in the US suggests that there are plenty of organisations that believe in the value of advertising on Google.

Maybe an advert doesn’t always generate a click for a small to medium enterprise. What it may do is plant a seed; that first recognition by a customer of their brand name and what they do. Although it is difficult to measure that impact, it is no different to many other forms of advertising when it comes to measurement. Radio advertising consistently scores poorly in research into where a customer heard about a product or service. However that customer may have heard the radio advert every day on their way to work and subconsciously it has made a significant impact on their purchasing decision.

I often hear people say ‘Advertising doesn’t work on me – it’s a mugs game’, however we are all subjected to adverts every hour of every day and these, albeit subliminally, have an impact on our buying behaviour. It would be naive to think that our purchasing decisions are not affected by advertising - especially Google Adwords that bring up highly relevant results to a visitor search, particularly when that search is research for a purchasing decision.

Can it work for you?

Google Adwords is a tool that many companies are using alongside their organic SEO activity. At Digital Hothouse, we can help you manage and maintain your Adwords campaigns in order to generate the most impressions and Click throughs. Adword campaigns require constant monitoring and daily evaluation to make sure the keywords identified are working for you. This is something we can help to manage, working closely with your company.

Google Adword campaigns are never a substitute for good, organic SEO activity; writing engaging content, identifying relevant keywords, structuring your content in the right way etc, however do not underestimate the power of Google Adwords to drive traffic to your company’s website, after all, $37 billion suggests there are enough people out there clicking on paid links to justify the expenditure.

I read a really interesting article recently which looked at the importance of providing context with data in which the author, Bruce Ernst, highlighted the recent issues Google have had around the release of some data relating to the number of Americans who potentially had the flu.

Basically, to summarise Bruce’s post, Google created an algorithm based on the number of people searching for information about flu and created something called Google Flu Trends – this compiled a number of good indicators to estimate flu activity. The magazine Nature took exception to this, highlighting that only about half the number of people identified by Google’s Flu Trends actually had the flu. What Nature did was assume that because Google had released this data, they were saying ‘this is the number of people who have flu’ whereas what they were actually saying was ‘this is the number of people who think they may have flu’, or even just the number of people that were interested in it as they or friends may feel they have symptoms of the flu.

What basically happened was Nature magazine made some assumptions based on the data provided because there was no context supplied with the data. So, where am I going with all this and what does it mean for you and your digital activity.

Analytics and data

Well, the point I am trying to make is that as organisations that operate on the web, we need to understand the data we are given access to and give it context. At Digital Hothouse, we specialise in not only the advanced implementation of Google Analytics in order to get you the information you need, but also the interpretation of that data. We can provide your business with countless reports that will tell you how well your site is performing, which areas are underachieving and where you could improve. However, without context, Google Analytics becomes rather redundant and all you end up with is a folder in your ‘inbox’ entitled ‘Google Analytics reports’ which you never actually do anything with other than file away.

Providing context

Digital Hothouse is here to help you get the most out of your website. We can certainly make suggestions and recommendations about the type of things you should be reporting on through Google Analytics, but at the end of the day, it is best if that information is generated by you the client. After all you are the ones that know your company inside out! You are the ones working with the products or services you sell day in day out. And you are the ones who can provide context to the reports that we can generate for you.

How do you provide context?

To quote from Bruce’s article, “Begin with the end in mind before you jump into your data. Start with a premise or hypothesis. Ask yourself: Should we care about the answer to this question? If we get this answer, can we do something with it? Should we do something with it?” You need to decide exactly what it is you want to achieve. Once you know what it is you want to achieve, you then need to decide what you will do with the information we can give you. Once you know all that, we can work with you to get you that information and get your website working for you.

How can we help you?

So, context is key to understanding any data you are provided, as seen with the Google Flu Trends situation. Decide what it is you want to find out, give it context and we will do the rest for you. We will work with you at every step of the way to make sure that you are getting the information that is most relevant to your company. We can set up reports that will give you an insight into where your customers are coming into your site, how they behave when they get there and then working with you, set up some funnels and goals that will help drive traffic to the pages you most want your customers to end up.

Analytics are there to help you get the most from your website and ensure people are visiting those key pages you have identified. By giving context to the data, we will help you to deliver results whether you are an e-commerce site, whether you need to raise brand awareness or a whole host of other reasons for hosting your website.

In the last post, we talked about the importance of link building and the various factors that search engines look for when ranking the importance and relevance of a link such as global popularity, topic-relevance, anchor text, domain authority and social media. We are now going to look at how you can start to think about building links with external sites and maintain this moving forward.

Link building

There are three main ways of building links with external sites:

Natural – these links are given naturally by other sites that find the information on your site relevant to their customers and deem it important enough to link to. You do not need to do anything with these links other than ensure you provide great content when they get to your site and also ensure that the anchor text that the site is using is keyword rich and relevant to the page on your site that it is pointing to.

Outreach – it is very rare that links just magically appear pointing to your site. There is always work to be done to ensure that highly trusted and globally popular sites are pointing at you. At Digital Hothouse, we can help to find relevant sites within your sector who would have a positive effect on your ranking and search traffic if they were pointing a link to you. Once we have identified the site, we can then target that site, creating a value proposition as to why they should be linking to your site. This can include influential bloggers, key organisations within your sector (but not your competition) and relevant directories.

Self-created – there are hundreds of sites out there that offer you the opportunity to link to your own site including blogs, commenting on news articles, guest book signings etc. These carry the lowest weight of any link pointing to your site, however like social media links, if you aggregate enough together, they can add up to send valuable ‘authority’ to your site. It is important to note that Search Engines can see aggressive linking through such methods as spamming so this approach should be a cautious one and only link to relevant articles.

Knowing which sites to target

Knowing which sites to target with your link building strategy is important and that is where Digital Hothouse can help. A good starting point is to look at your competitors. Using simple tools, we can find out which sites are linking to your competitors who may rank well for a particular keyword or phrase. We can then look to target those sites and help to improve your ranking for the identified keyword.

We can also look at relevant search terms that have been identified for your site and analyse the companies who are ranking well for those terms. If you are looking to rank well for a term such as ‘car rentals’, getting a link from sites that already rank well for that search term would help significantly.

What can you be doing now?

One of the easiest ways to start any link building strategy is to get your suppliers and customers to link to you. Get them to endorse you on their site or simply add a link to show other organisations that they have worked with you. Sometimes you may need to put a more formal agreement in place and reciprocal linking is common, however always evaluate the companies you are linking to and from using the factors we have already discussed.

Set up a company blog – you can see the value of that from looking at our own blog. We are constantly signposting to relevant areas of our own site as well as previous blog posts. Blogs are a great way of creating new and engaging content on a monthly/weekly/daily basis. Using sites like Wordpress or Tumblr can be an easy way of setting up a blog or developing one within your own site.

Going back to a previous blog post, creating interesting, fun, exciting sharable content is one of the best ways of ensuring people link to you. Using videos, pictures, podcasts, infographics etc all have viral potential if they are done in the right way and that’s what gets people talking about and linking to your content. There are lots of examples out there but a couple of our favourites include ‘Will it blend’ and ’The one dollar shave club’. These are different but very effective ways of getting comments, likes and most importantly shares. Each time someone shares a link to content like this, it points to the location of the content. By hosting videos on their homepage, they are providing interesting and engaging content and encouraging people to share that content.

Finally, produce newsworthy material. If your news articles get picked up by the press, this will lead to lots of traffic pointing to you. These days, you are also likely to attract the interest of influential bloggers if you produce something truly newsworthy and these blogs can really carry weight with search engines.

So, there are lots of things to consider when starting out on a link building strategy. Some things you can be starting to think about now, others you may want further advice with and that’s where Digital Hothouse can help.

If you want to improve your search ranking and traffic success, you have got to start thinking about link building. Links are like tunnels, connecting sites and pages together, helping people to navigate the world wide web and find the content that is most relevant to them. Links are like a popularity contest; the more you have got pointing to your site, the better your search traffic and like all good popularity contests, if the cool kids are voting for you, then you are likely to be the winner.

How do search engines rank links?

Well, there is no specific evidence to support how search engines rank links, however over time, it becomes clear what factors are important to search engines and these are the things we can start to focus on. First of all there is global popularity. The more popular and trusted a site is, the more value search engines place on links coming from that site so the key is to identify relevant, trusted sites and find a way to get them to link to you.

Relevance

Secondly, there is the relevance of the site linking to you. If you are a car rental company and you have sites like Ford, or VW linking to you, search engines will place a higher value to these links than if the local butchers is linking to you. This is sometimes referred to as topic-specific popularity.

Anchor text

Anchor text can also play a huge part. When you are looking at a link building strategy, make sure that people are using the relevant anchor text on any link pointing to your page. This should be keyword rich and consistent across every link pointing to your site/page. The anchor text should use the search phrases identified within the Search Phrase Research done, whilst also looking at your website analytics, plus a whole host of other factors.

Trusted domains

Links from highly trusted sites also carry more weight. The internet is littered with spam; some estimate more than 60% of online content to be spam. So it is important for search engines to filter this out so trusted domains (government sites is an example, as are major news outlets such as the BBC, NY Times and even the lowly NZ Herald) carry more weight when they link to your site.

Fresh links

The freshness of your links is also important. Links decay over time. The page that a link is pointing to may no longer exist, content may be static and uninspiring or you may have had an overhaul of your site. It is important to maintain an ongoing link building strategy; you need to be consistently building links to your website, thereby keeping the links fresh and up-to-date. We've lost count of the amount of times we've seen clients (mainly in our previous lives) see their rankings drop once they decide to pause or cease their link building.

Social media

Finally, social sharing has changed the way we are able to link to content on the internet. The ease by which people can now add links on their Facebook page, Twitter feed or Google+ page means that there are thousands of links being created each day. Although links from social sites do not carry as much weight, if you aggregate enough of these links, it can make a significant difference to your ranking and traffic success.

How to start a Link Building strategy

In our next post, we will take a look at how to start and maintain a successful link building strategy and how Digital Hothouse can help.

As you would expect, we talk a lot about the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) on our website and in this blog. Good SEO can take your business to the next level and provide you with a sustainable competitive advantage in ever increasingly crowded markets.

We have talked about the importance of keywords and how good keyword research and implementation should underpin any SEO activity. We have also looked at the importance of content marketing and the need to provide your customers with relevant content that they a) want to engage with and b) are likely to share.

Google Analytics

Digital Hothouse can help with all of these things, however where we excel is telling you how these changes really affect your business and we do this using Google Analytics. Whilst it may be possible to carry out changes like implementing relevant keywords and improving the content on your website, unless you know how well your site is currently performing, it is difficult to monitor, evaluate and assess the impact of the changes you are making.

Goals and objectives

Google Analytics allows you to set up goals and objectives for your site which can be tied in to any SEO activity you are currently working on. This is critical to evaluating the success and value of any SEO work that you are doing on your site as without it, you are simply making a series of random changes will no idea of the outcome.

We can work with you to help you decide what it is you want visitors to do when they visit your site. What do you consider to be your key pages? Is there important information buried within your site that people are simply not finding? And what is the end goal of a visit to the site? Is it a sales conversion? Or maybe your site is more about raising brand awareness, in which case, you can still put in place other measurable goals such as visits to key pages.

Keywords

Google Analytics ties in really nicely with your keyword activity. We can work with you to track the value of key search terms through Google, Google Adwords and Facebook. This will help you to refine the keywords on your site and ensure you start ranking for the most valuable words to your organisation.

A key advantage with Google Analytics, especially if you have an eCommerce website is that you can tell, which search engines (Google, most likely!), from paid or natural search, and even down to the keyword, how many sales and how much revenue came from each keyword. When doing SEO around specific keywords, surely the most important thing to know would be which keywords bring you the most money? If that keyword isn't ranking top on Google, then let's get it there and get more money!

Reporting

You may be wondering how you are supposed to analyse all this information and streamline your SEO activity?? Well, once we have set up your website to record data through Google Analytics, we can set up automatic reports that will land in your inbox every month or even every week, showing you how your site is performing and also highlighting where tweaks may be necessary.

There numerous reports we can set up for you and each are simple and easy to understand. They allow you to look at your content and how it is performing, your audience, your keywords and the links across your site. If you are also active on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, we can also set up a report to show how successful your social media channels are at referring traffic back to your website. This will allow you to see the type of content that people engage with and the content which is not as successful, again allowing you to streamline you activity online. By doing clever things within Google Analytics, we can identify which posts people have liked, shared on Facebook and shared on Twitter!

Be SMART

The importance of Google Analytics cannot and should not be underestimated. If you want your SEO activity to succeed, you must be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) with your goals and objectives and you must monitor and evaluate the activity being carried out on your site.

Understanding Google Analytics and getting the right data out can be tricky to learn. If you need any help, contact Digital Hothouse today!

In the last blog post, we looked at the importance of good content when planning any SEO strategy. Critical to any search engine optimisation strategy and the first thing you should do is carry out keyword research. It is impossible to build a SEO strategy without knowing what keywords you are going to target. The competition for those keywords you have identified will influence the approach you take in your strategy and it is important to get this stage right.

Keyword research and great content

As discussed in the last post on content marketing, great content relies on good copywriting in order for people to find the things you are writing about. In order to help people find that great content, good copywriting starts with keyword research. Ranking for the right keywords can make or break your website so the importance of carrying out research cannot be understated.

Keyword research ensures that you not only get more people to your site, but you also get the right people to your site; those people who want to engage with you and ultimately the consumers you want to convert.

Understanding the importance of keywords

It is important to understand the value of ranking well for keywords that relate directly to your business. The first thing to do is ask yourself whether the keyword is relevant to the content on your website. This is critical in attracting the right kind of traffic to your site as people need to be able to find what they are looking for on your site when they get there. You must also ask yourself whether there is a financial or organisational benefit for ranking for that keyword. If the answer is yes, then you have a keyword that your organisation needs to rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Carrying out keyword research

Although it would be nice to rank for some of the critical words associated with your business, you must also be realistic about your own position on the market, your company history, your competitors and your brand perception. These are all factors which could affect how well you rank for specific keywords. If you are a Dentist, ideally it would be great if you ranked number one for the word ‘Dentists’. The chances are, this is not going to be you (unless you are Lumino, in which case, congrats on being the top ranking NZ company for the word ‘dentists’ on Google NZ - but we knew that, because Digital Hothouse got you there!). So, you need to be tactical about the words you are likely to rank well for. A great starting point for your research is to come up with a list of keywords and see who is already ranking for these words (they will more than likely be your competitors). If you also see a high number of ads popping up, then it is likely that competition will be high for those words making is more difficult to break into the top of the rankings. In our SEO projects, Digital HHothouse uses tools to generate this information which enables us to see exactly what competition each keyword has and therefore the difficulty to rank for those keywords.

Google’s AdWords keyword tool

The most common way for people to start with keyword research is to use Google’s AdWords keyword tool. This is a free resource to anyone and can be extremely useful in providing you with information on the keywords you wish to rank well for. It allows you to see the number of monthly searches both globally and locally for a particular word or phrase and also shows you the competition for that particular word or phrase. It is important to differentiate between broad, phrase and exact match, plus the locations that you are targeting and Digital Hothouse can definitely help you with this.

The tool also suggests related keywords and allows you to see how much a paid campaign for certain terms may cost. This is a great resource although it should be noted that this is only a guideline and is for a very large market i.e. Google. Optimising for a single search engine is not wise. Although the majority of searches are carried out through Google (86.93% of searches in NZ are carried out through Google.co.nz, Source: Experian Hitwise), concentrating solely on Google can potentially negatively affect your ranking in other search engine results pages. You need to ensure that you carry out your research across the board and balance your keywords if you wish to rank well in all search engines.

This is why research of your market and competitors is so important before you begin with any SEO work. Your preliminary research should be your focus as without this, many SEO strategies are doomed to failure and a lot of your work can be in vein.

Searching for the long tail

Ranking well for the single word (e.g. dentists) that is the most relevant to your industry is obviously the ideal scenario, however as we have discussed already, this is also extremely tricky. That is when long tail searches become increasingly valuable to your organisation. ‘Long tail’ refers to the number of words included in a particular search term and are often indicative of a searchers stage in the buying cycle.

If a searcher is at the ‘browsing’ stage of the cycle, they are likely to search for single words such as ‘watches’. However, as a searcher becomes more motivated to purchase and has carried out their initial research, they are more likely to refine that search and add more terms to their search e.g blue ice mens chronograph watch. This type of searching is referred to as the long tail and makes up 70% of all searches performed on the web.

Sometimes this sort of searching behaviour is referred to as explorers, hunters and trackers where explorers are the people who are not too sure what they want, hunters may have an idea about the type of product or brand they are interested and trackers know the exact product/service they desire and are motivated to purchase. The chart below displays some examples of the difference between the short and the long tail and how this fits in with the search behaviour of consumers:

*Stats from Google’s AdWords Keyword tool: range reflects broad to exact match searches

What it is important to understand is that the long tail produces more conversions. Searchers are motivated at this stage to purchase so ranking well for these long tail search terms can often lead to a sale.

This search value pyramid demonstrates the use of keywords and where it is important to use short tail and when it is important to use long tail keywords and phrases.

To help understand the long tail and the demand curve, check out this graph showing the demand curve from SEOMoz:

There's more to keyword research than this, but hopefully this shows you the importance of keyword research and getting your strategy right before you go changing all the content on your website. To find out more and to get our expert advice, get in touch with Digital Hothouse today!

I am often asked when running training sessions about the ‘hints’ and ‘tips’ to ensure that a website or specific pages rank well within search engine results pages (SERPs). I always have the same answer for them; the first thing that you have to do is to make sure you get the content right.

Of course there are lots of things you can do with your content to help search engine spiders to pick out the key things that you want them to take into consideration; keywords, proximity, modifiers, links, metadata etc, however at the end of the day, all of these things will be futile if the content is not something that people want to share and engage with.

Give them content they want to actually read

In days gone by (5 years ago), Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) was all about writing content that would rank well in SERPs. It was once possible to write content stuffed full of keywords which really made little or no sense to the end user but which would rank well in Google (or other search engines). Today and moving forward, successful SEO is going to rely on providing content that people want to actually read and more importantly that they want to share.

5 important rules of SEO content marketing

Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOMoz recently outlines five best practices for content marketers:

1. Create content that people have an incentive to share.

2. Do keyword research, so you don’t waste effort writing about things people don’t care about.

3. Put all your content on the same domain/subdomain.

4. Stand for something and write about it. People don’t buy what you do, they buy what you do with it.

5. Don’t separate your brand from your content. Make sure what you write about ties in with the objectives and aims of the business.

I would add to this a couple more points:

6. When you are writing new content, write for your target audience(s), not for the people in your office. Although the content you write may be interesting to your colleagues, is it something your target audience is likely to share?

7. Write about the benefits of whatever you are selling, not the features. People don’t want to know what a product/service does, they want to know what it does for them and more importantly, they will share it with people if they think it can also do something for them.

8. A final often overlooked point when building your content structure is how your target audience will describe your content.  Though keeping your brand presence is important, long tail descriptions, especially surrounding your brand or key search terms can increase the value of the content significantly all the while adding re-enforcing context. In short, it’s a win, win situation.

Copywriting or content marketing?

You may be thinking that everything above is actually all about good copywriting, not content marketing and to some extent you would be right. Content marketing and copywriting are intrinsically linked – one would struggle to survive without the other.

Good copywriting relies on having good content to write about, otherwise you are just packaging something nicely which will ultimately lead to customers switching off.

Good content marketing relies on excellent copywriting, otherwise you are just wasting great content. There are many excellent blogs out there which don’t generate any traffic. This could be down to a number of reasons, but poor copywriting could be a big influencing factor including things like the headline, benefits for readers etc

Content marketing is here to stay so it is important to jump on board and start giving people what they want – excellent content.

Recently I was invited to write for a new publication speaking to entrepreneurs in New Zealand - cunningly titled, "NZ Entrepreneur".

Well, it's hot off the press and in my first article for them I'm writing about the best ways of purchasing a website. There are many pitfalls associated with getting a new website, be it your first, or updating an old one and this article will show you how best to go about it.

The full first issue of NZ Entrepreneur, can be found here