How To Get Your New Website to Page 1 on Google

I work for LBM Marketing in Cheshire and we recently launched Watch My Wallet, a new consumer advice, moneysaving tips web magazine.

When I studied SEO and social media marketing at Salford University for three months back in 2012, I learned a few useful strategies for optimising websites, especially content. This is important because Google puts new websites in a kind of sandbox – a holding pen if you like – while it works out how trustworthy, useful and original your content is.

Obviously factors such as the structure of the site, clean IP address and many more are important, but nothing helps to boost your site’s early page rank so much as links via social media, news outlets or getting individual articles ranked highly on commonly searched keywords.

START WITH A PLAN BASED ON HUMAN NATURE

People search for a variety of reasons but using Google Insights & Trends, setting up Google Alerts, using Rippla to gauge newsworthy stories and many other tools will help you form a plan for your site itself and the content within its pages.

Choose a topical story, get a trained writer to produce keyword rich content and tag it in your CMS - it will boost your page rank.

For example we researched pet insurance terms, listed the top keywords over 3-12 months, checked typical `modifiers’ and cross-referenced that with news stories.

We found that Lloyds TSB withdrew pet cover for older pets in Feb 2012, plus we saw `reduce pet food bills’ was a common search phrase. We put them together and three weeks after launching the site, we had position 1, page 1 on google for our article.

OK, it isn’t always that easy – we didn’t get that lucky with every article, but we did get page 1 results for seven articles within 17 days after launch – got to be happy with that

PR STILL HAS VALUE

We had a low budget PR campaign, based around syndicating press releases about topics such as `saving money on travel into London for Olympics 2012.’  That got us a backlink from the San Francisco Chronicle and other newswire services within a week of being sent out.

As petrol prices increased and the tanker drivers strike caused more searches for reducing driving into London costs, we found the original article on `cheapest ways to drive into London‘ picked up more interest through late March. That was lucky, sometimes Google works out like that.

Links from major news sites are worth having. Why? Well when your website is new you have to prove to Google it isn’t a scam/pills/porn site – it has to build trust and authority, partly through decent quality link traffic. Newspaper, radio and good blog links matter, so devote some time and money to chasing them.

GO SOCIAL, TRACK LINKS

The Watch My Wallet logo - your branding is important in the long term, so hire a good graphic designer.

We established Twitter, Pinterest, Google + and Facebook pages for Watch My Wallet. Facebook performed the best in terms of referral, closely followed by Twitter. Open a bitly account and shrink your page urls, bitly will track visits by each article or feature link for you – you can compare those to your Analytics stats.

Google + is really only worth doing to please Google by the way. It’s like a gym; many people are members, few actually use it.

We found the `8 Ways to Reduce Your Pet Food Bills’ story performed well on social media, especially Twitter. This kind of story gets people talking, so use that `Twitter rage’ factor to get links to your content. My personal feeling is you should NOT automate Twitter content, but put the man hours in.

Be a real human, be nice, it gets a better quality follower and that’s what you need to convert people in the long run. Your brand values MUST be paramount, not your follower numbers.

USE A CMS THAT IS CUSTOMISABLE

One final point; your content CMS must – absolutely MUST – have the facility to add keywords and a unique keyword description for each article or story. Tag photos and videos too, never miss a chance to define your content. It works.

Our Watch My Wallet developer has chosen Umbraco and it is performing well. Easy to use when uploading a variety of features each day too with details like default sizes for images within stories. Anything that makes your site look professional builds reader trust, so use a good CMS.

If you have any SEO tips for brand new websites, post them below – I’m always keen to learn more!  ;-)

 

 

Working with The Connected Generation

Working with Lincoln University students at a social media conference called Linc Up Live, gave me an interesting insight into the future, and a remarkably bright, fast paced future at that.

The students in action at Linc Up Live, Feb 2012

Think about it for a moment; we browse online, from Amazon to Pinterest, our butterfly minds bookmarking products, gig tickets, experiences that shape our view of the world. Websites welcome us back by name; our virtual friends share our blogs, photos, music tracks or news links. Ours is a connected world.

The generation that are studying at Universities across Britain today are perhaps the first in history to have a digital footprint since childhood, a truly social strand to their DNA.

All twelve of the Lincoln Uni media team who arrived at the Doubletree Hilton for Linc Up Live had their smartphones at the ready, Twitter profiles set up and a good idea of what the event was about. Fact is, almost anything can be researched in seconds via Google. From laptop to X-Box – we’re all connected.

Don’t Waste a Single Moment

Myself and fellow editor Mark Jennings chatted about the key messages from the event we wanted to amplify online:

1. Social media works for business
2. Consumers are using social to talk back, companies must hold conversations with their customers, not simply broadcast marketing speak
3. Employees are all potential brand ambassadors, via blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
4. Analysing what works in terms of customer loyalty, brand values and reaching new customers is an essential part of the process

After exchanging emails, explaining the subbing and content posting schedule, we allocated work, exchanged emails, plus Twitter handles and then a very impressive, very keen, student media team set to work.

It was inspiring to watch young people discover new ideas from those working at the sharp end of business within companies such as IBM, Orange and the UK Police Service. Editing the blog posts I was struck by how detailed and methodical the students were in taking notes and capturing the essence, the key points, in each speaker’s presentation.

We live in an age where people `surf’ Twitter and online news sites for tiny nuggets of information, we are all time poor, so communicating the essentials in an entertaining way is crucial for any online content channel. Who was it that said, `Attention is the new currency?’ Not sure, but they were spot-on.

A Learning Curve is Only as Steep as Your Own Ambition

Within the twelve people who joined us from the University for Linc Up Live I’d say there are at least three or four who have the potential to edit and manage `blue chip’ brand channels or online publications. Ultra professional approach to work.

It was immensely refreshing to work with people who have real drive, resourcefulness and ambition. The young generation often get a bad press in the UK, but all I can say is that the connected generation have a massive opportunity to change this country, especially the idea of what `work’ should be about and whether we need museums like `office blocks’ any longer.

Well done everyone, great work.

Twittering on @npointsocial

Paragliding Ölüdeniz

Reblogged from A Bolt from the Blue:

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Surely running a paragliding business out of a resort town with a name that translates to Sea of the Dead, would have to be a bad omen? From the ~2000m summit of Babadağ I took a leap of faith, content to either fly like a bird or a stone down to the turquoise Blue Lagoon. Luckily for me, I flew like the avian former.

Read more… 66 more words

Just had to reblog these amazing photos from Olu Deniz. Went there last summer, but I'm too old and too scared to try this..!

Moneysaving smartphone apps; Onavo data saver

This is one of the best free apps I’ve used on my iPhone over the last three months. Onavo is easy to install and once set up you start saving data immediately, as it compresses all those push notifications from social networks, shrinks pictures and video and puts a handy lid on your emails too.

Compresses your data in the background and it's free - Onavo is my kind of app.

Looking at the dashboard I can see that I’ve saved 129MB of data this month, which is just over 10% of my 1GB allowance on my phone contract. Handy indeed.

Networks in the UK are slowly waking up to the idea that people actually want to use their fancy pants smartphones, which means downloading lots of data. T-Mobile have an `all you can eat’ package at present. But if you’re still locked into something with say a 500MB per month cap, Onavo is one app worth downloading right now.

You can get it for Android too.