SEO Tips: News Values & Brand Values All Count on Google

Content marketing is the hot thing now for many companies. It isn’t rocket science, but it requires you apply newsroom values and discipline to make it work well. Fact is, there’s no quick fix, SEO isn’t a `black art,’ it is a skill set rooted in journalism.

You need trained journalists because your brand is competing with media outlets for P1 on Google. It’s a shark pool out there.

If you want your content on Page 1 of Google, recruit an SEO trained, experienced writer. It works.

You could cut corners, use an outside agency or freelancer who syndicates blogs and re-writes press releases in a keyword-stuffed kinda way, circa 2009. But it probably isn’t going to work.

So read the papers, watch the TV news, use Google Trends, Alerts, trade journals, websites, forums and Twitter to see what’s hot in search volumes. Both within your business niche and the wider economy.

Never forget human nature; people are greedy, they love something for nothing, like PPI compensation, dodgy insurance claims, cheaper petrol, designer clothes reduced by 50% in the Debenhams Sale, or vouchers for a free meal at their local restaurant.

Give them news about freebies, shops going bust and selling stock cheap, big brands dishing out voucher codes.

NOT ALL CONTENT IS LINKBAIT

You need some values, something beyond keywords.

This is where most companies lose the plot because they often see content as essentially subservient to commercial needs – every article has to make money, or gather data.

Good content can get your brand a top position on Google’s search pages.

But business is about brands too, and the trust you build into a brand has a tangible, cash value. Ask John Lewis, M&S, Aston Martin, Apple, the BBC, or Moneysupermarket.com who paid Martin Lewis £87 million for Moneysaving Expert, because readers TRUSTED what they read there.

Give your readers true value; like the knowledge to avoid online scams, or ways to buy something expensive that bit cheaper than your neighbour. People want knowledge and the internet is a knowledge economy, still developing its true potential and power.

In a decade there will be no UK High Streets as we understand them now.

There will be leisure shopping experiences, places that are fun, pleasant, safe and packed with major brands. But we will make all our essential, everyday, `distress’ purchases online. Content marketing will ease the sting of that impersonal process, empower some consumers with wisdom and expose the shabbier, more obviously dubious companies.

We live in interesting times, chronicle them.

How to Use Content Marketing to Get to Page 1 on Google Search

People talk about content marketing and how 2013 will be the year when many businesses finally get to grips with it. Possibly.

Will 2013 be the year of content marketing? Maybe. If business people get their wallets open.

For me, I don’t see that happening this year in the UK, because most businesses do not have the time, willpower or resources to create original, well written content, which will achieve a high page rank on Google.

The harsh truth is that most SMEs and smaller businesses think they can do it on the cheap. Big companies are more switched on in general, but few want to invest serious money in quality content.

Many senior managers and directors still think that by paying web developers and web designers huge amounts of money, they can `game’ Google. That there is a `trick’ to getting to P1/P1 on Google or Yahoo.

SEO isn’t X-Box; there isn’t a `cheat’ app, or website, which will enable your company to consistently get P1/P1, although there are plenty of web developers who will happily sell you that notion. And forget about link farming, that train has left the station.

The Technical Side Matters, But You Need Good Writers, with SEO Skills

Good websites need many things.

Error free website code, high quality links, H1/2/3 site structure, XML sitemaps, W3c compliance, a lack of flash media, or appalling marketing spam above the fold on your home page. There are many other technical aspects, but nothing is as important as excellent content in the long run, when it comes to overall page rank and making money from particular pages within your site.

You would think people would grasp this basic truth, but there is still far too much syndicated PR fluff, outsourced Pidgin English copy bought for peanuts from People Per Hour or some dreadful Copyscape rehash of old, or stolen content, which is irrelevant, poorly written, keyword stuffed or just riddled with tacky affiliate links.

Great stories, hard news, `how to’ articles that answer questions, product reviews, comparisons, witty, short video clips and outstanding, shareable photos. That’s what you need. Downside is, it costs money – because good writers and image creators need a living wage, just like web developers do.

If You Include News and Topical Articles on Your Website, then Employ Experienced Journalists, Not Interns or Amateurs

I will speak slowly, so that the slow of understanding can note this point; journalism matters, it drives traffic, boosts conversion rates and helps websites make money.

Storytelling is an art and like a great TV ad, online video, podcasts, or features, need skilled creative authors.

Irrespective of what you think of the Mail Online website, it delivers, being the most read UK newspaper website by a huge margin – twice as big as its nearest rival, the Guardian. The reason is that people get the news, 24/7, plus comment from both journalists and readers alike. For free.

Then there is the clever `wall of shame’ photo strip at the right-hand side of the Mail Online page, which acts as internal link bait – these pictures of scantily clad women, celebrity affairs, weight loss/gain pics, soap stars in court, Harry Styles copping off etc. all keep readers clicking on Mail Online stories – reader engagement.

That engagement, that precious web browsing time, builds trust and when people like and trust your website, they are about 20 times more likely to click on a link to a partner company, advert, or graphic image which acts as an affiliate link. That is how Martin Lewis made his £87 million from MoneysavingExpert – trust.

To create all that topical content, you need pro writers, and photographers, with SEO qualifications. Or you can hire editors to add the vital SEO tweaks via the CMS ( Content Management System) when the content is posted. It helps if those editors keep up to date with Google’s shifting sands of SEO rules and regulations too.

That too, takes a financial investment, you cannot learn it all from a Mashable post or two.

Case Study: Beating Car Magazines at Car Reviews

Google search result for Jag XF 2.2 diesel review.

OK, check the screen grab; Google P1/P4 result on my Jaguar XF 2.2 Diesel car review.

Now, let’s be blunt, I shouldn’t be able to beat What Car, Auto Express, Fleet News, Autocar, Evo and others with my review on Watch My Wallet, which isn’t a car magazine.

Google should see my feature as being less relevant than specialist car magazines, but it doesn’t.

The reason this content has a good page rank is because I have applied the lessons learned whilst studying SEO and social media marketing at Salford University. Great course, if you’re in business, you should try it – I’m not on commission by the way.

I also used Google Analytics and Trends, to fine tune the content, so that I could match it to the potential searches entered online.

For example, top keywords include the Jaguar’s engine size; 2.2 litre, mpg, review, road test and the engine type, which is the more popular diesel variant. In my experience, Google likes to look at the opening paragraphs of articles to define relevance, so try and make sure you write a natural, flowing intro, that has two or three of those top keywords in there. It works.

Define your images, add the make or model to the image description – some people search Google Images, not the text search, never forget that.

Don’t forget to mention rival cars. You want potential car buyers to look at your content, because ultimately you need some sort of link, or partnership deal to monetise your content. So people who type `Jaguar XF 2.2 vs Audi A5 diesel’ need to see your content on P1 of Google, because you really, really want those readers.

You can create content that has a higher page rank than articles produced by specialist magazines.

There are some other SEO tweaks involved, but these basic hints and tips should serve you well. So go and create some original content, write some reviews, and amplify your reach using social media. Google Analytics will tell you which days, which hours of the day, your Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook or You Tube posts are most likely to bring you the right traffic.

Content marketing can, and will, bring readers to your web pages, and where our eyes go, our money follows.

Tweet me @npointsocial

 

 

Are Friends Electric? No, But The Smart Electric Drive Is

Tested the Smart electric car recently, which looks like a refugee from a giant Lego factory, but might well make sense if you live in London, or another city which offers tax breaks and free parking for electric vehicles.

The smart electric fortwo is a great little city car. But watch that battery meter.

Like the Smart petrol, this is a 2-seater city car, with basic luggage carrying capacity, nippy acceleration, but a fairly unexciting top speed. In fact I reckon the electric version would struggle to hit the giddy speed of 73mph which I squeezed out of the Smart petrol about 10 years ago.

Time has updated the interior however, which now has air-con, groovy dials showing battery life remaining and the `regen’ zone, plus more racy semi-bucket seats. My memory could be playing tricks on the seats however.

On test, which was a distance of maybe 10 miles, the battery meter fell from 60% to 40%, so I would guess that city driving in winter would cane the battery into a gibbering wreck in about 50 miles.

In theory, if you brake, or coast downhill the regen gadgetry adds a little charge to the battery cells.

In reality coasting down a very long hill near the M62 raised the battery meter by 1%. Great. Except I was doing 28mph by the bottom of the hill and angry truckers were queing up behind me.

Inside you have all mod cons, it’s a well equipped city car.

Is an Electric Car a Practical Everyday Vehicle?

For all the practical problems associated with electric cars; limited range, having a chargepoint installed at your house and the potential catastrophic drop in residual values, I became a fan of this car within 5 minutes.

It’s just like driving a battery powered go-kart. Acceleration is instant and the sheer nippiness of the Smart annoys regular petrol car drivers, with its whirring oomph away from the lights.

In London you avoid the congestion charge and get free parking in some locations. Obviously there’s no VED tax to pay. On that basis the £11,000 cost ( base model) isn’t too bad if you are saving say £15 per day in congestion and parking fees.

The battery pack in most electric cars will start to degrade in about 7 years, which means it won’t hold its charge for the same distance. After 8-10 years you will probably need a new battery pack and that cost – which could be around £3000 – is what hammers the resale value of electric cars. But Smart think that many customers may choose to lease the car, or the battery pack.

A similar lease deal is available on the Renault Zoe, which retails for £17500 by the way.

the Smart petrol can manage 70mpg, so would a used one make a better buy than a new electric drive?

Plus points; Forget petrol stations, London congestion charges

Minus; You could lose £7000 in 3 years in depreciation, nobody in the car trade knows what a used Smart electric will be worth.

It’s Time for Small Businesses to Forget Facebook – They’ve Ruined It

I will cut to the chase;  Facebook has sold its soul to Goldman Sachs and needs an enormous aircraft hangar of cash this year, or the share price will kiss Satan’s arse in the depths of Hell.

Facebook – No, we don’t ‘like’ the way you’re hiding our posts and wasting our time. Goodbye.

That means they are busy hiding posts, editing your Facebook stream to make sure the good stuff doesn’t get spotted by your target market and even persuading solo FB users – some of whom run back bedroom businesses – to pay to promote posts to friends. Desperate tactics.

The latest stats from Google Analytics confirmed what I suspected back in November when FB began its campaign of making all the time and effort put in by small business owners a complete waste of time and money. Post Views are down 60-80%. Comments down about 50%.

Twitter is now referring more traffic than Facebook, for the first time ever. Google + and Pinterest are starting to awaken like the sleeping giants they are.

Facebook can’t do anything else, but unless you’re Tesco, Mercedes, universal Studios or another megabucks brand that can spend cash, polus employ a pro team of social media content writers and bloggers to manage your FB pages, forget it.

For most small business owners, time – which is money – is better spent elsewhere.

ALTERNATIVES TO FACEBOOK

Google + Hangouts offer a superb opportunity. Set a time and day each week for answer questions – if you lack the expertise, then get an expert to sit in for an hour. They need to have personality – this is web TV don’t forget, attention spans are measured in milliseconds.

Likewise Google Communities have the same free marketing potential that FB had until 2012. Upload your content, like other communities, post a comment – form a circle, literally, with your wagons.

Part of Google’s Penguin plan is to make the Knowledge Graph more important than keyword stuffing when it comes to blogging. Long overdue.

Spreecast - imagine You Tube crossed with Skype – that’s Spreecast. Have a live chat, product demo, advice session etc – then edit it as a 20 minute show. Use Twitter as a back channel as they do on Thursday nights ( UK time) with #SWchat. This is the future. Embrace it.

Authority Blogs – the Knowledge Graph is coming. Don’t know what that is? Well Google is about to stitch threads of authorship around the web, with a view to setting author rank, in the same way it sets page rank.

That means if you blog on sites like Huff Post, national magazines, newspapers, or anything with credibility, you’ll soon show up in the Knowledge Graph.

MCi Tours; travel the USA on two wheels.

Or rather, your content, complete with backlinks, alt tagged photos and You Tube/Spreecast videos will.

What do you mean, you don’t know what an alt tag is for..? Oh #FFS.

Did you know I have a client called MCi Tours who gets 30% of his blog traffic from Google Images searches alone?

So yes, alt tag your photos with some sense, logic, keyword research and creative elan. Then cap it at about 15 tags per picture. It works.

It will work even better in the future, when more people browse from small tablets and smartphones, which means image search will be more finger/thumb friendly than typing quesries.

Edison would call it a light bulb moment. But it’s just SEO baby; a slippery chameleon of content.

So let’s all say goodbye to Facebook in 2013 and hello to creative thinking I generally do mine down the disco, so see you on the dancefloor. I’m the guy in the crazy shoes.

Saturday Night Fever. Right moves, right time. There’s a lesson there.

Pandas, Penguins and Learning To Love Disavowed Links

Two key changes to Google’s search algorithm this year have, at long last, tipped the balance away from SEO `experts’ and put the emphasis back on readable, sharable content.  Penguin and the Disavow Links tool.

Here’s a team of SEO experts, on a team-building day at Alton Towers. They don’t understand why they can’t jump the queue by using meta tags.

In the beginning, the internet was an information resource; a way of connecting people’s ideas and gleaning nuggets of knowledge.

But over the last decade, SEO has become a Harry Potter-esque black art. Basically smart-arsed geeks have spent all their waking hours trying to figure out ways to bend Google’s rules.

Well, there’s a load of money at stake for the websites that make page 1, positions 1-5, so who can blame them?

But now, it seems, Google’s had enough of all that sh*t.

 

Pandas and Penguins are Really Bitches From Hell

Google pushed ahead with both the Panda and Penguin updates earlier in 2012. In essence, both changes were about rewarding fresh, original content and high quality backlinks.

There were a raft of technical changes too, but it’s the emphasis on editorial content above the fold – that’s the top section, or most visible part of your homepage – not marketing, competitions, or spammy links to crappy `Mom Lost 57lbs With This Weird Tip’ adverts that counts.

Penguins put lots of energy, care and attention into one chick. Google’s Penguin will reward site owners who also take time to do things right.

Without doubt that has damaged the ranking of thousands, maybe even millions of websites, but you know what, most of them deserved it. People don’t really want to visit sites stuffed with keywords, copy written by machines, or peppered with dodgy links.

Fact is, the old methods of employing SEO experts to  optimise your site for Google ( and Yahoo and Bing if you’re really thorough) are rapidly coming to an end. Which in my opinion, is long overdue and a good thing.

Google is Going Back To Its Roots Baby

For those of you too young to recall the internet pre-1998, there were search engines which didn’t provide much relevant content in their results. Search then was like a fairground lucky dip. That’s why Google became the dominant player in the market; it just worked better.

Well now, Panda and Penguin are doing the same job – delivering relevant information to those who search for it. The bottom line is that if you don’t put truly relevant information on your website or blog, and write your copy for humans, not search crawlers, then your site is toast.

By all means, keep wasting money on link farms, syndicating the same dull PR via content scraping `news’ sites and paying outsourced bloggers 58p per page for 4% keyword-rich drivel if you like. It won’t work.

So What The Hell is A Disavow Link Tool and Why Does It Matter?

Glad you asked.

There was another little Google tweak a few weeks back. A Disavow link facility was launched and this means that webmaster can stop crappy sites from linking up with them.

Now links matter, big time. Probably 70-80% of your site’s page rank is determined by the quality, as well as the volume of your inbound links. So for example, a link from Salford University, the BBC, or Huffington Post carries more weight with Google than say a link from weBuyAnyPreOwnedMeds.com

I hope that site doesn’t actually exist. But you never know.

Worse still, low quality links can damage your site. Google sets store by `trust and authority,’ so poor links from dodgy sites will shove your home page back down to page 37 of Google’s SERPs.

So now, you can take action and Disavow the link. Break that daisy chain of pills, porn, gambling, or tedious home insurance adverts. Excellent. You can use Google Analytics to see which sites are linking in each week, test their page rank using SEO Majestic or Alexa, maybe even visit the site, and then if you don’t feel it’s a quality website, Disavow.

Nail those bitches into the cellar of spam. And throw away the hammer.

Be A Real Person, Be Social

Now, I’m going stick my neck out and say few people will disavow a link from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, You Tube and a whole load more social networks.

This is me, Alastair Walker. Introduce the author, because this is going to matter more than a few snippets of code from now on.

All of which should mean that traffic from those networks will become intrinsically more valuable as far as Google is concerned – no matter what they say in public.

If Google wants to maintain its credibility, then real, human interaction – the water cooler effect – has to have a defined SEO value. It also means that a site’s rank for say `best deals in iPhone covers’ will ebb and flow, according to how viral their content is. We should see SERPs evolve into a kind of Top 40, with sites going up and down pages 1-3 with more volatility.

In theory.

What Can A Small Business Do to Combat The Big Boys?

Get an editor on your website listed as an author, with a Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter and WordPress or Tumblr profile. You really do want that author to pop up in the new Knowledge Graph search feature that Google is rolling out soon.

They should aim to become an authority info resource, in old journo parlance, the ‘go to’ person for a quote on a topic.

Another key point; make sure the social sharing buttons on your home/news pages are at the top of the page – in 20 years working in old media, I can tell you that advertisers paid more for those page positions because IT WORKED.

Don’t put the sharing buttons at the bottom of a news story – lots of people simply NEVER scroll down the web page. Here’s a little web page eye-tracking research for you.

Your site has to push people’s buttons, make the content worth sharing.

You absolutely have to – no excuses – get your content shared via Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Pinterest etc. That social aspect of your news section on your website is crucial now. There’s no dodging around it.

You need quality copy, sharp images, all alt tagged so they pop up in Google Images, plus a You Tube channel – Google owns it and you can see YT results popping up on P1 of SERPs.

But you want your YT clip to be shared right? So you’d be crazy to think your video content doesn’t need a strategy, a HD camera, a decent audio track – professional editing basically. Stop cheap skating and get on with it. Or die in the search rankings.

The internet is becoming a place where credibility, honesty, authorship and the craft of writing relevant copy, not keyword-infested rubbish, is going to be rewarded in search algorithms – praise the Lord and pass me the ammunition.

You Cannot Code Human Interest Stories, Someone Has To Write Them

Your site needs news, which has to be topical, informative and – like San Diego – classy.

The thing is, good content goes viral and site visibility is becoming a fight to the death for our attention span. Why does this matter? Well, where our eyes go, our money often follows.

Hire yourself a damn good, creative, news-hungry writer – or watch your site wither and fade and lose business. We are all deserting the High Street and shopping via mobile phones, tablets, Kindles and apps over the next decade. It’s an unstoppable, structural shift in our economic way of life.

Your website isn’t primarily about clever code, sitemaps, meta descriptions, tags and 101 other pieces of geeky, trivial architecture. Without beautiful, seductive words and images, it is nothing.

Stay classy.

 

SEO is Shakespeare, but Google doesn’t know Romeo

If you want to understand SEO, read Shakespeare.

The thing about old Bill is that he possessed both a beautifully sharp, direct economy of prose, whilst also being capable of expressing complex, poetic ideas. The sparks fly from Shakespeare’s text, igniting fireworks within our souls, even today.

SEO is, like Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth or Julius Caesar, ultimately about human nature. We search to have our needs sated, our questions answered, our dreams fulfilled. Unwittingly, we define ourselves, for no matter how we paint a portrait of ourselves in real life, our search histories encode a great part of what makes us tick.

Where our eyes covet, our money follows.

SEARCH ENGINES DON’T KNOW SHAKESPEARE

Google can read Shakespeare, but it doesn’t understand it. Humans do that.

It’s been said many times before, but computers are dumb. They have to be taught stuff by geeks, which is why they keep breaking down. In real life, geeks tend to lack humanity – they just don’t care enough.

Search engines, designed originally by academic geeks who wanted a kind of peer-to-peer equation which rated their metaphorical willies, have now evolved into a frenetic, never-sleeping global marketplace.

People sell stuff, they meet for a chat, or perhaps they gamble, view potential lovers or purchase things which make them feel happy.

Google is exactly like a 16^th century marketplace in Southwark, except it doesn’t understand the nuances of language like Bill Shakespeare. Google struggles with layers of meaning, it’s still learning to sift wheat from chaff.

When you look at the blunt, `short tail’ keywords which bring people to web pages, you don’t get the full story. `Car insurance’ on its own is almost meaningless. Ranking on page 1 for it, is nothing more than a start, a jumping off point.

What matters are the couplets that follow – or as SEO geeks call them, the keyword modifiers.

What did they add next; `car insurance for under 25s, older drivers, banned, drink drivers, women, over 70s, London, one day, student, overseas visitors etc?

CONSORT! WHAT, DOST THOU MAKE US MINSTRELS?

When Mercutio shoots his verbal barbs at Tybalt’s cat-proud ego, he uses a double meaning popular in Shakespeare’s era.

`Minstrels’ was slang for gay lovers and Mercutio knows Tybalt won’t be able to handle the jibe. If you google the word `minstrels’ you will eventually discover this literary reference. But only after reading about medieval lute pluckers, racist variety shows from the 70s, Richard the Lionheart’s Blondel buddy, or the chocolate sweet formerly known as Treets.

The point is, Google doesn’t know your website. Or your business. It doesn’t understand what the words on your pages actually mean, it only really sees the structure of the site and views the traffic patterns which drive visitors to your pages – or pictures/videos for that matter. As regards content, it takes an educated guess, based on other sites which feature similar keywords to yours.

So always explain things for Google. Tag every photo with relevant keywords and have a theme to those magic words. Write a meta description based on KEYWORD RESEARCH, not a hunch your marketing girl Sophie had whilst chinning another bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

Be methodical, but be creative too. Be unique.

CREATING CONTENT MEANS LEARNING, BEFORE WRITING

Google is dumb. Fact.

Create content based on search patterns relevant for your business. Study your customers carefully, listen to the language they use, watch where their eyes take them online, learn from the layers of meaning they type into Google.

Google Analytics is agreat place to start this process. But email records, phone conversations, news sites consumed, social media photos shared and a dozen other metric analysis tools and apps can all help.

Again, sifting wheat from chaff is the art of understanding.

ALL THAT GLISTERS…

The story of your customers true lives; the passions they pursue, the fears they assuage with medicines, alcohol, food, cars or a hundred other trinkets, contain the code which links them to you.

The way your content is consumed, and crucially, shared online, is the real gold dust within your site. Ask `what is the nature of this person, what do they do with my site?’ Don’t set too much store by what they say. Half of that is bullshit.

Never stop studying your customer search volumes, always test keywords relentlessly, watch how people refine and develop their search term language as new interests hook them, because human nature never sleeps. It endures.

Like Shakespeare.

 

 

Automated social media for business: A total #fail

AUTOMATED SOCIAL MEDIA? A TOTAL #FAIL

Many companies have jumped on the social media bandwagon. Trouble is, when you think of it as a bandwagon, then you are likely to fail right from the start. Going social means marketing with a human face.

People click like. It doesn’t mean they really like your brand OK?

Any business or public sector department which deals with the public should be using social media, but it differs from old fashioned company media. The crowd are talking back and you had better have a plan to deal with that, or your brand will end up looking like it’s being managed by idiots.

AUTOMATION IS FOR ROBOTS, HUMANS COMMUNICATE

Many social media `gurus’ will explain to marketing managers or managing directors of SMEs that using Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or many other fashionable social media tools can save `wasted man-hours’ and amplify their brand values online.

Well, up to a point.

It’s true that Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Rippla, Monitter and many more can keep tabs on your chosen topics, what’s being said about your brand online etc. All good. But where they fall down is encouraging `scheduled’ tweets or posts.

Research using Tweetdeck, don’t schedule 87 samey tweets each day.

Imagine for a moment you run a shop on a High Street, then try and picture your sales staff uttering exactly the same banal questions, marketing-speak updates or cheesy polls in the shop doorway at 12 noon every day. Pretty soon, your customers would start punching the staff in the face.

NEVER USE FAKE PEOPLE

Some companies even employ outsourcers who plant tweets on your pages, in a pathetic attempt to spark conversations with real people. Real cheapskates will employ semi-literate people who pepper your Facebook and Twitter feed with spelling and grammar errors too.

Thing is, once people twig who your fake followers are, your social media channel is finished – nobody will believe anything they see in your company feed.

Game over.

Here’s some basic stuff you should avoid:

Scheduled tweets, Facebook or blog posts

Buying `off the shelf’ polls instead of properly researching your sector

Using third party social media staff who have no understanding or affinity with your brand – and paying them peanuts

Spamming LinkedIn with the same marketing messages in three or four groups

Lying. A typical case was a recruitment consultancy which tweeted the same `We’ve just filled two vacancies in Liverpool today’ at 8.30am every single day

Using real people, to express opinions and hold live conversations is risky. But in the long run, it is the only way to succeed on Twitter.

Give your social media a human voice and never think that automating it is making the entire operation super-slick and groovy.

Automating your social media is far more likely to kill your brand reputation. Employ skilled, trained, staff to manage your channels. Work out a strategy and stick with it, build a loyal following.

 

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!  ;-)