Link popularity is widely regarded now as the dominant factor of search engine rankings. If a competitor’s site is well optimised and has stronger inbound links from reputable, relevant sites, they will rank higher then you. Links act as votes for your site qualifying your content and therefore the major search engines regard a site with good quality back links better than a site without. (more…)

The world of business has quickly evolved with the introduction of the internet. Now at least half of the developed world has access to the internet and 90% of people find sites through search engines, predominantly Google, which drives online purchases. Online allows businesses to have a global reach at a fraction of the cost of normal businesses. It is not surprising then that online is growing at 40% each year in the UK. (more…)

The Evolution of a Google Query

Most people know that a search engine provides users with relevant search results to their search queries, however not everyone understands how search engines do this. Below details how Google delivers their search results. (more…)

Special texts are any content on your page that has been formatted specifically to stand out from other content on a page. Special text tags include bold, italic, underline, coloured, sizing and highlighted text. Special text makes particular text stand out to the user and it is therefore more important than the other text. (more…)

Search engines provide the best matches to a users search query. They rank sites using programs called spiders or robots and return what they consider to be a prioritised listing to any query. Google is the biggest search engine and has over a 70% market share and are very much the focal point for all SEO and paid search campaigns. Google though, was not the first search engine the and actually began quite late. So why did people start using Google? In short, because they delivered the better results to the search queries than the other search engines. (more…)

Anchor text links are a form of hyperlink on a web page that directs the user to a different web page or to a specific section of a web page. This is normally done for reference to aid understanding. A hyperlink can be a text or a image link. An anchor text link is a hyperlink with visible, clickable text and are an effective search engine optimisation (SEO) technique. (more…)

The internet has revolutionised everyday life. Most people use the internet several times a day to do things like sending emails or buying clothes and groceries. A lot of people spend several hours a day on Facebook chatting to friends and family. In fact 95% of people research products online before they buy them and more and more people are buying products online rather than buying products in shops.

The internet is so popular because it is convenient and most in most cases, cheaper. It also provides the opportunity for people to interact who liver thousands of miles apart completely free. The internet is huge and is only going to get bigger. (more…)

The latest update to the Google algorithm has been named Google Penguin and went live on the 24/04/2012. It has had a huge effect on the SEO world both in terms of rankings and in terms of link strategies. It has now been 6 weeks since Penguin first went live so let’s have a look at its effects.

Google updates are nothing new and have happened for years. The first big Google update was Google Florida back in 2003, then it was Google Panda which went live in 2009 and now it’s Google Penguin. Like any program, these are constantly updated and refined. (more…)

Keywords are the fundamentals to all search engine optimisation campaigns and therefore it is vital that you choose the right ones. The important factors to consider are search volumes and competiveness. An effective SEO campaign will target keywords that are achievable and deliver a good level of search traffic.

If you target a keyword that is too competitive, you are unlikely to achieve first page rankings and therefore will not receive much search traffic. Likewise, if you pick easy keywords with little search volume, you will be at the top of the search engines for a keyword that is never search for. So how do you go about getting the correct balance? (more…)

Often people ask what is better; pay per click advertising or search engine optimisation, aka SEO. I am therefore going to go through the two and explain the main differences and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

For those who don’t know, pay per click advertising is where an advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked on, whereas SEO is the optimisation of your site so that it appears at the top of the organic search rankings.

Google AdWords is the most popular pay per click platform with over 80% market share and is divided into two sections; the search network and the display network. To keep things simple, I am going to compare SEO with the Google AdWords search network. (more…)