SEO Blog by Lead Generators

Who is Alexa?

Julietta Henderson — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:15:10 +0000

I keep hearing the term ‘Alexa Ranking’. Just who is this Alexa anyhow and why should I care if she ranks me or not? Isn’t it just Google I want to give me a good ranking?

Thomas, Cornwall

Hi Thomas, well I can see you don’t like the idea of being ranked by a woman! But don’t worry, Alexa is actually named after the Library of Alexandria (the company is comparing the Internet to the great font of stored knowledge of the ancient world).

Alexa is a subsidiary company of Amazon.com and is based in California. They collect data on Internet users’ browsing behaviour which is analysed and stored. This data becomes the basis of their web traffic reporting business.

In plain terms, Alexa claims to be able to show you how the traffic to your site compares to that of your competitors - in essence how popular your site is.

On the surface, this could be a great metric for your site.

However, Alexa has its detractors who feel that these rankings are, “useless bits of unsubstantiated statistics and that it only measures your “popularity” from a very specific set of Internet users, mainly from the English-speaking world”.

Alexa can only measure and follow the internet usage of those who download the Alexa toolbar onto their computers. It could be argued that the people who download and use this tool are, in fact, ‘techies’ (who else would want to download the Alexa toolbar?).

If this is the case, a more important factor to consider, when deciding if its use has a place in your online marketing solutions, is whether you care what Alexa users think about your site or how popular your site is amongst those who download the Alexa toolbar. For example, if you are selling diving holidays and the techie Alexa community does not visit your site much, does that really matter to you? After all, they are probably not your target market in the first place!

Maybe instead of trying to become more popular amongst the techie community (and caring what they think), you should be trying to make yourself more popular amongst the diving community?

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Who is Alexa? is a post from: SEO Blog by Lead Generators

The Price of Petrol

Frank Orman — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:55:27 +0000

When speaking to clients about online marketing solutions and specifically about how to improve their Search Engine Optimisation, we often use the analogy of a car.

Imagine your website as a car; preferably a nice sporty one! Getting your basic site structure and doing your KEC (keyword enriched copy) are like the building of the car itself. So far so good? Ok, so building the car is a one-off process and once it is all put together, polished up and ready to go, what else do you need? Well, you’ll need the petrol in order to actually get that car to move.

So, if you are following the analogy, your petrol is pretty much all the ongoing work involved in the ongoing SEO process and keeps boosting your rankings and helps keep them ahead of the competition. This includes an ongoing program of creating fresh content (that is optimised – both onsite and offsite), an ongoing Link Building Programme and constantly increasing the credibility (SEO footprint) in the eyes of search engines.

While it doesn’t take much to grasp the analogy, it isn’t always what clients want to hear. Many still a have a perception (or hope) that there is a quick magic wand and that they just have to pay a one-off fee to shoot their site’s rankings to the top of Google. The bad news is, just like a car, SEO needs ongoing fuel to produce results. But the good news is, just like a car, if you put in the petrol and step on the gas, an effective, ongoing SEO programme can take your website to the places you want to go.

But please drive safely!

The Price of Petrol is a post from: SEO Blog by Lead Generators

Can you Blog your Way to the Top?

Julietta Henderson — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:23:13 +0000

Question:

The other day at a meeting, one of my suppliers asked me if I had a blog on my website. When I responded that I didn’t, he seemed surprised and said that every website should have one and that it would help increase my rankings. I don’t know the first thing about ‘blogging’ but I feel like I should try because this guy said he had been to an Internet Marketing training seminar and that’s what they told him. Can you explain?

Andy, Hertfordshire

Hi Andy.

Well, firstly, if this guy’s Internet Marketing training course told him having a blog would help increase his rankings, they’re not hearing the full story. A blog for the sake of a blog doesn’t have any magical powers to assist in getting you to page one of Google on its own; you need to ensure it is properly optimised and working in conjunction with the rest of your site (more on that later).

What a blog DOES do, first and foremost, (and search engines love this) is provide regular, fresh content to your site which, in turn, means that it will be indexed more regularly. If the spiders see that a site is constantly being updated, they will visit more often. Most blogs’ software also now has a ‘pinging’ function which seems to get them indexed quicker.

Now, on to the optimising of your blog. In our experience (and we’ve got quite a lot when it comes to blogs) if your blog is properly set up and managed, it CAN have a huge impact on your rankings. But there are a number of SEO considerations that need to be addressed; you need to insure the blog has meta tags and that you utilise some good, key phrase rich internal linking to other pages of your site (if it is an onsite blog,) as well as making it interesting and relevant by the use of external links.

If you host the blog offsite (on a different domain) then you will need to spend a lot of time and effort building it up so that it is a credible source in the eyes of search engines. This requires quite a commitment and, unless there is a specific reason for wanting to do this, we recommend your blog is onsite.

So, Andy, a blog can be a fantastic part of your online marketing mix, but you must be prepared to implement and manage it correctly – and if you don’t have the time for that, there’s always LeadGenerators!

Hope this helps Andy.

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Can you Blog your Way to the Top? is a post from: SEO Blog by Lead Generators

Is Twitter the Fastest Growing Search Engine?

Emily Collins — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 09:59:08 +0000

If we started teaching you how to optimise your Twitter tweets during an internet marketing seminar then you’d probably think that we weren’t all there. After all, LeadGenerators are experts in search engine optimisation and Twitter isn’t actually a search engine, or is it?

Well according to Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, the site is now supporting 800 million search queries per day. This is an astronomical amount, particularly when you compare it to the largest competitor in the field – Google, which supports 88 billion search queries each month.

This number may not be a threat to Google just yet, but it’s certainly worrying for Yahoo and Bing! It isn’t only the search figures that could prove worrying for these two competing search engines, but also the rate in which the Twitter search engine is growing. Figures from Nielsen show that since last April, Twitter searches have increased by 33% whereas Bing searches have only managed a 22% increase in the United States.

Rather than competing, it seems the search engines are doing all that they can to work together in harmony. Twitter has formed search partnerships with Google, Microsoft and Bing, where the sites can use all of Twitter’s search data and implement it into one overall package. This happened as Twitter’s search results are in real-time, so its competitors wanted a piece of the action. The CEO of Twitter, Evan Williams has expressed interested in improving the Twitter search engine and making it much more intuitive, with this in mind it looks like Twitter’s competitors have a real battle on their hands and unless Bing and Yahoo can start offering real time search results, bringing in the number of queries that Twitter does, we might have to start running seminars on Twitter optimisation.

Is Twitter the Fastest Growing Search Engine? is a post from: SEO Blog by Lead Generators

The Whens and the Wheres of Email Marketing

Fiona Stevens — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:28:47 +0000

I’m looking to start stepping up my Email campaigns and whilst I’ve no problems deciding on the content of Emails, or who I want to send it to, there are a few other things playing on my mind. Could you tell me how often I should be sending out Email marketing paraphernalia, and also when the best time to send it is?

Anna, Surrey

Anna, you’re in luck, as this is precisely one of the issues that we cover during our Internet Marketing training sessions. However, much as I would love to say that I can give you a definitive answer to your question, I’m afraid in Email Marketing (just as in most other forms of Online Marketing), there are few cases of black and white, simply a fair few shades of grey instead.

One part of your question, however, I won’t hesitate to answer and that is the how often part. The truth is, it isn’t a matter of how often you send a newsletter or any other form of Email marketing, but more a case of how regularly. It is important to send your Email at the same time, whether it is each week, each fortnight or each month, as people will learn to expect it, and with any luck even wait for it with eager anticipation. So as I always tell people during my Internet Marketing training, don’t worry about how many to send, just be sure to always send it at the same time.

As to your other question, the best time to send it, I’m afraid there is no good answer. Send it on a Monday and people are too busy clearing their inboxes from all the mail they received over the weekend, send it on a Tuesday and people are too busy working hard after losing all of Monday to Emails, send it on a Wednesday and you are most likely to find people out of the office at meetings, send it on a Thursday and you will find too many people bogged down having not got enough work done at the beginning of the week, and send it on a Friday and you will either catch people on their days off, or when they are frantically clearing their desks for the weekend. However, don’t despair! Whilst people may not read it straight away, if your content is something that they want or is useful to them, there are many such as myself who will keep that Email in their inbox, saving it for a quiet afternoon or a rainy day and eventually they will get around to reading it. The chances of it being read the minute it hits an inbox are so slim, that there is little future in spending hours agonising over the best day of the week to send it.

I hope that’s answered your question Anna, and if you would like to add us to your mailing list please feel free – we promise to read your Emails the minute they arrive! Or perhaps you’d like to come to one of our Internet Marketing training sessions and find out even more about Email Marketing…..

Have a Question and want to #SEMStump Us?

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The Whens and the Wheres of Email Marketing is a post from: SEO Blog by Lead Generators