SEO Consult offer free website SEO Analysis

UK.TopSEOS.com rank SEO Consult as the No1 SEO company this year.

I've requested an analysis of www.data-mind.co.uk by SEO Consult (division of Click Consult).

SEO topic by Business Link South East

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• What is a search engine and how do they work?
• Design your site for search engine optimisation
• Using keywords to improve your search engine optimisation
• Submitting your website to search engines
• Search engine optimisation tactics
• Working with a search engine optimisation agency
• Choosing a search engine optimisation agency
• Tracking your search engine optimisation results

Actions

• Search engine information on the Search Engine Watch website- Opens in a new window
• SEO information on the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organisation website- Opens in a new window
• SEO toolbox on the National B2B Centre website (registration required)- Opens in a new window
• View local and national events linked to this topic
• View grants and support schemes linked to this topic

The Five Most Important Things You Can Do with Google Webmaster Tools

a user friendly user guide by SEOchat for Google Webmaster Tools.

1. Turning 404 errors in the “back links” to your site into a live link.
2. Further increase website traffic by using “Top search queries”
3. Know the back links pointing to your site
4. Check your robots.txt and submit an XML sitemap
5. Remove URLs from your site

Search Engine Check Workshop @ Business Link – Fareham

James Cope says he will visit E-Traders 21 October in Bournemouth. I've asked him if he can talk to us on SEO.

by James Cope, Fareham, Hampshire, BusinessLink:-

Tonight I will be running a search engine check workshop for delegates at Business Link’s open evening in Fareham.

The session is aimed at giving attendees the tools and techniques to be able to perform a basic search engine assessment of their website. For search engine success it is widely accepted that onsite optimisation accounts for only around 20% of the activity required, with the other 80% contributed by offsite online activity.

With that in mind to assess your onsite optimisation follow these basic steps:

1. Measure current visitor levels
2. Undertake search phrase/keyword research
3. Select search phrases per page
4. Check that those terms appear onsite
5. Tweak & measure

1. Measure Visitor Levels
Before you start the journey it is good to know where you are starting from! If you do not have already I would suggest getting some sort of statistics package configured to the site. A package such as Google Analytics gives key information such as the number of visitors, the sites that are referring traffic and the search terms used.

2. Undertake Keyword Research
The information that your statistics give are a great start, however they do not tell the whole story. Keyword research tools also support the process giving suggestions of alternatives that if optimised for may attract higher visitor levels than your current terms.

3. Select Search Phrases
Tip here is to consider your visitors buying process, what terms do they use to research your products/services and how do these change when they have completed research and are looking to buy or enquire. Look at the pages of the site and determine which best support that pages theme. Try and limit to a single core phrase and perhaps two sub phrases.

4. Check Site Elements
With the phrases chosen it is now time to check that these appear in your onsite elements, the main elements I would consider would be

• meta title
• meta description
• header tags
• alt tags
• body text
• internal hyperlinks

That is not an exhaustive list but covers the basics, to get an up to date list of some of the main ranking factors visit the SEOmoz blog http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

You do not need to do this process long hand there are tools that can help, the spider simulator in the attached presentation is one. There are also software tools such as webceo and internet business promoter, both of which have free versions that give limited functionality that can be useful.

5. Tweak & Measure
Once you’ve identified the gaps in those important elements, dip into the site coding to add them in. You may or may not be able to do this as it can depend if you have created the site yourself, or the limitations of the content management system provided. If not talk to your developer about the changes and discuss how you can manage this on an ongoing basis until you are happy with the results.

Tip here is to give it some time for changes to be spotted by Google and for them to take effect. Look at the trend your statistics are showing, and don’t over tweak when you have a model that is working. Continue to build on the process bringing in offsite online activity that make the difference, turning the site from a well optimised but unvisited site to a well optimised centre of information with good traffic levels. But that’s another seminar topic!

For those that attended, I hope you found the session useful attached to this post is the Business Link Search Engine Optimisation Workshop presentation as promised.

As discussed David Lakins @ Key Multimedia has copies of the onsite and offsite search engine optimisation tip sheets

There is more help on the topic at the Business Link website which has a section on keyword selection and optimisation

Would be interested in hearing from any delegates the effect of any optimisation you undertake, or if you have any other questions please ask away.

Alexa

I first came across Alexa when www.BeSeenOnABike.com was on the Bowshot E-Den in 2007.

One of dragons informed me that the site was not in the top 8 million sites and only had 2 visitors per day.

Build your own Alexa graph.

report complaints about online and related transactions

What is econsumer.gov?

econsumer.gov is a portal for you as a consumer to report complaints about online and related transactions with foreign companies.

link via http://seo-by-crabsallover.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-tips-on-hiring-seo-avoiding.html

Google Tips on Hiring an SEO & avoiding rogue SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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Check out our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide!

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

• Review of your site content or structure
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
• Content development
• Management of online business development campaigns
• Keyword research
• SEO training
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies.

Keep in mind that the Google search results page includes organic search results and often paid advertisement (denoted by the heading "Sponsored Links") as well. Advertising with Google won't have any effect on your site's presence in our search results. Google never accepts money to include or rank sites in our search results, and it costs nothing to appear in our organic search results. Free resources such as Webmaster Tools, the official Webmaster Central blog, and our discussion forum can provide you with a great deal of information about how to optimize your site for organic search. Many of these free sources, as well as information on paid search, can be found on Google Webmaster Central.

Before beginning your search for an SEO, it's a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work. We recommend starting here:

• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web.

If you're thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better. A great time to hire is when you're considering a site redesign, or planning to launch a new site. That way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed to be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing site.
Some useful questions to ask an SEO include:

• Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
• Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
• What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
• What's your experience in my industry?
• What's your experience in my country/city?
• What's your experience developing international sites?
• What are your most important SEO techniques?
• How long have you been in business?
• How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index. 

Here are some things to consider:

• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:
  

  "Dear google.com,
  I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories..."

  Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or "throwaway" domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it's best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to "help" you.
• You should never have to link to an SEO.Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.
• Choose wisely.While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html. While Google doesn't comment on specific companies, we've encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.
• Be sure to understand where the money goes.While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they "control" other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn't work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you're considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.
• What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?
One common scam is the creation of "shadow" domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client's behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor's domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO. Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO's other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.
• What are some other things to look out for?
There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It's far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:
• owns shadow domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware
• has had domains removed from Google's index or is not itself listed in Google
• requests your FTP account information or root access to your server
If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it. If your complaint is against a company in a country other than the United States, please file it at http://www.econsumer.gov/.