Avoid Flash if you want search engine rankings
Flash is really popular for website design because it allows you to do loads of pretty things that you just can’t do with standard HTML. EConsultancy have a list of top 10 cool flash websites that’s worth checking out if you want to see what they can do.
They really catch the eye and this shows that they can even be viral since people are discussing them based on how cool they are. But where Flash absolutely kills your website is when Google comes to ranking you.
Last year, Google announced that they can read Flash and just this week they’ve announced that they can now read external files loaded by Flash. What that says to me is that while they CAN read Flash, they don’t do a great job of it. If they announce that they can read Flash but then have to follow up with announcements that they can read flash a bit more than they used to, then common sense dictates that there’s plenty of stuff in Flash that they still CAN’T read.
This means that you’re still more likely to have better search engine success if you just stick to HTML.
I would suggest a compromise - keep all of the SEO special bits in HTML, so that includes your titles, headings, important body text and navigation. When you want to do the pretty stuff, use Flash, but keep all of the important bits out of the Flash file. That way, Google will find what it needs to find by reading the HTML (something that it’s super-good at) and your visitors will still be blown away by the great animations and graphics capabilities of Flash.
Sharing knowledge helps your website rankings
One of the hardest things to do to move your website up the rankings is to get people to link to your website. It can take many, many hours of effort each week just to get a couple of useful links.
However, one of the easiest ways to get links to your website is to share some of that great knowledge that you’re hiding up there in your brain!
I constantly bang on about how useful it is to keep a blog and to update it with useful information. But as well as writing information on your own website, you can also write for other websites and generate a few links back to your own site.
There are a couple of ways to do this. One way is to offer to write a guest blog post on an established blog. The best way to do this is to know in advance what you’re going to write about and then approach the owner of the blog that you’d like to write for and make a pitch to them.
It would be helpful if you’ve followed that blog for a while and know a bit about it so that you know what they like to write about and what sort of readership they have. Then when you approach them, make sure that you sell them the idea and make it clear what they’re going to get out of it and what their readers are going to get out of it. If you can show them that you can give their readers something that they can’t then they’ll bite your hand off!
Another alternative is to write an article and then submit it to a few article websites. This is much easier but it isn’t quite so effective because article websites are usually fairly generic and have a habit of being spammed by other SEOs. However, it’s still an easy way to get a few nice anchor text rich links pointing to your own website.
When it comes to writing the article, try to take some pride in what you’re writing! Don’t just crank something out and liberally sprinkle links all over the place because that will look incredibly spammy!
One less spammy option would be to write the article as if you were writing it for your own website, and then include a paragraph about yourself as the author at the bottom, with relevant links back to your website.
Alternatively, you can write the article and where appropriate, link back to relevant pages on your website.
So if you want to create a few links to a sub-page about mobile air conditioning units, then your article would perhaps be about the practicalities of using a mobile air conditioning unit and the benefits of using one over a static unit. Then, where appropriate you can link on the words mobile air conditioning units back to your website.
However, don’t forget to add content to your own website as well! Getting links to your website is great but don’t overlook the importance of making your own website a useful resource - continue to add useful articles and blog posts to your own website.
Don’t worry about website rankings
Are you one of the people that checks their keywords and their rankings every day? Do you panic and break out in a cold sweat when your site drops a place and then go crazy trying find more links and start writing more content (or call up your SEO guy and go nuts at him)?
I was once told that if you look at your rankings every day then you’ll go crazy. I found that to be pretty good advice.
The problem is that rankings tend to jump up and down naturally. It can be for any number of reasons and often the fact that you’ve dropped a position is just a by-product of a different change. It’s often just a temporary change as well.
I continually see rankings start the day in one position, drop down an hour or so later, spend the day bouncing up and down a few spots and finish the day back where it started so that the fun can all begin again today.
Remember, SEO is at the very least a medium term exercise. What you want to see is a general upward trend of your website moving up the search results over a period of a few months. If the trend is going up then things are good. If it’s going down then you need to try harder.
What I would recommend is that you check your rankings two or three times a month. That way you’ll free up a stack of time to do some proper optimisation and you won’t go crazy when you site drops a position due to Google trying a tweak to its algorithm!
SEOBook: Highly recommended
I’m a really good SEO. I run my own SEO company and we’ve had some amazing results with clients over the past couple of years.
It’s taken me many years to get to this level and I’ve learned it all by watching other people, reading blogs, forums and looking at untold amount of search results and websites! And for sure, I’ve gone down man, many wrong paths and wasted hours, days and weeks on stuff that was totally wrong and based on some seriously wrong advice that I’d picked up!
However, one place that has always given excellent advice had been the SEOBook website.
Ignore the name - it’s not a book. It used to be, but now it’s grown into a massive private community with lots of great SEOs including perhaps the best known of them all - Aaron Wall. As well as great articles, videos and walkthroughs there is a fantastic forum where you can ask questions and get excellent advice back from these guys and girls.
If you want to know the cutting edge stuff that’s going on in the SEO and learn how to apply it to your own website then you really MUST become a member!
I’ve never EVER recommended a programme that you have to pay for but this is the one programme that I would recommend.
If you want a website to rank highly and you don’t want to pay tens of thousands of pounds or dollars then you have two choices:
1 - Do it yourself by spending thousands of hours on blogs and forums, making lots of mistakes and doing things that have never worked since 2001, OR
2- Join SEOBook and get advice, guidance and expert tips from some of the best guys in the world.
Really, you only have one choice: join up with SEOBook!
Click here to find out more and to get some free tasters.
How to grow your Twitter network
I’ve been using Twitter heavily over the past month (5500 followers and counting!). I would like to share with you some of the things I do to grow my network and (just as important) to retain the people that I have in my network already.
Share interesting pieces of information
If I’m reading a particularly interesting blog post or news story then I will tweet the URL. Not only am I helping my followers by giving them some useful info but I’m also helping the author of the blog. If I’m lucky then I may even end up with them following ME and tweeting MY blog posts to their followers. If they have many thousands followers then I’ll attract new followers and website hits.
I also encourage people to ask me questions about search engine optimisation and website marketing. Not only does it help them but it gives me an excuse to show what I an expert I am in front of 5000 people. If the advice that I give is particularly useful then my followers may re-tweet it to their followers, who may then follow me.
Interact with my followers
I often ask my followers questions. There are a few reasons for this. It nearly always gets a discussion going and gives me things to tweet about. And often people are just looking for a reason to start tweeting but don’t necessarily have something to say - me asking them a question gives them a reason to tweet.
Finally, I love to hear from people that are following me - they often have great insights and great stories to share, so I generally always get something beneficial from it.
Interact with the people I’m following
As well as asking people questions I’ll often respond to other people’s tweets. I follow people with similar interests so I nearly always have something to say. By having a dialogue with people (regardless of who they are) I have learned loads, acquired new followers and even won a stack of new business!
Really, the key thing about Twitter is to interact with people. Don’t worry about the ‘big’ names on Twitter - if you can build your own large network of people that like what YOU are doing then you can start to enjoy the benefits of a large Twitter network.
If you want to join the fun then follow me on Twitter!
How to get the most from Twitter
How to get the most from Twitter
One of the things I’m often asked about is how to actually use Twitter. I’ve written a post about this before, but this time I thought I’d ask my followers on Twitter for their best experiences.
The two questions I asked were:
What’s your one best piece of advice for success on Twitter?
and
How do you make the most of Twitter?
I also promised to put the results on my blog - I’ll tell you why at the bottom of this post.
The results
Here are the tweets that I’ve received so far:
@Bikini_beat - ”Mine is to actually have fun with it rather than treating it as an item on your to-do list… what a concept!” - http://www.bikinibeat.org/
@savamaloy - ”if your photo is of a scantily clad young girl and you list ‘modelling’ among your interests, you’ll get more followers!” - http://www.piggynap.com/
@Tocquigny - ”Success on Twitter is based on knowing who is following you” - http://www.tocquigny.com/
@Rusty44 - ”Interact with your followers” - http://www.riddenhard.us/
@blogdesigner - “I use twitter to build a network of voices and belong to a wonderful tribe of people and we help echo our voices to a larger mass” - http://www.blogthememachine.com/
@HollowMarkeD - “follow interesting folks and don’t be afraid to prune out noise” - http://www.guava.co.uk/
@icasimpan - “Never use twitterfeed specially if your feed gets updated with several posts at a time as it would be like sending spam” - http://www.buggedtech.com/
SociableBlog also provided two relevant links about how Twitter
@sociableblog - “Dell to Use Twitter for Global Mobility & why twitter needs multimedia”
Quite a lot of advice there - some of it I don’t necessarily think would work for me but it’s great to get a mixture of feedback.
For me, the best advice there is to interact with your followers. This whole post came about thanks to interacting with my followers. I also said that I would provide a link to their website because it gives people an incentive to respond as well. And I’m a great believer in sharing links - see this article to see why.
Advertise your website - for FREE! Tip #3
In the first part of this series we looked at email signatures and how important it was to have your website address listed prominently in it. And in the second part we looked at various online ways to draw attention to your website.
In this third part, we’re going to look at the various things you can do offline to publicise your website. I’m actually an online website marketing expert but there is some overlap - the main aim is to get your website address in front of as many people as possible and encourage them to visit your site.
Online or offline, the same rules apply - you have to give people a reason to come and look at your website. In fact, with offline you have to be even more persuasive because rather than asking someone to just click a link, you’re asking them to go fire up their computer and then type in your URL.
This brings me to another point - make sure that your URL is memorable. Now I don’t know if this image is fake or not - but if it’s real then I am astonished! Please, whatever you do, don’t publicise a URL like this!
So, what can I do?
Do you have your website address on:
- Your company stationery?
- Any vehicles that your company has?
- Your office signs?
- Any merchandise that you produce?
- All of your promotional literature?
Wait a minute, I’m doing all of this stuff.
OK, most of the things above are pretty obvious. But remember what I said - you have to give people a reason to come to your website. So just having a web address hidden away at the bottom of your flyers isn’t good enough - very few people are going to be inspired by a link.
Instead of having a web address on your flyers, you should have a web address with an invitation to the reader:
“http://www.yoursite.com - take part in our fiendish quiz and win a free marketing consultation”
“http://www.yoursite.com - use code ‘XXYY’ to get a 10% discount on our services”
All of a sudden there is a reason to go to your website, and if your website is good enough then you’ll be marketing to them whilst their on the site, doing the quiz or whatever.
The same goes for your company vehicles. If you click this image then you go to a Flickr site where people are discussing Calmac ferries and the fact that they have a giant link on the side of their boat.
There’s some easy free publicity for them. You can do the same. Why not be creative with your links on your company vehicles? Instead of just having a plain old URL on your vehicle you could have a question:
“Want to know more about me and what I’m doing in my van? Visit our site at http://www…..”
That should be enough to pique the interest of a few motorists!
I don’t have a company van…
OK, but do you drive to the office each day? If so, do you have your URL on your car?
No? Why not?
You may pass thousands of people each day going to and from your work - why not try to market to them while you’re driving. You probably see the same faces each day and you’ll have a captive audience -if you flash your URL at them often enough then curiosity is going to get the better of them!
OK, I get the point!
What I’m getting at is that you can always improve your online and your offline marketing! Take a little bit of time and look at what opportunities you have to publicise your website, and then look at whether you’re making the most of them.
I’ll bet that you can definitely improve them!
Advertise your website - for FREE! Tip #2
In the second of this series, I’m going to look at how you can market your website using techniques that are usually only spoken about when discussing search engine optimisation (SEO) but which have many benefits for your website makreting as well.
Whenever someone new to SEO asks a forum how they can increase their ranking in Google there are usually four common responses:
- Write articles or press releases and submit them to press release and article websites
- Comment on blogs
- Submit your website to internet directories
- Contribute to web forums
It’s good advice, although the quality of return can be variable, but instead of looking at it through the eyes of an SEO, why not consider how these methods can also be used to effectively market your website?
Articles and Press Releases
Firstly, if you regularly write press releases that are aimed at getting coverage in newspapers and publications, make sure that you at least have a link to your website. Unbeliveably many press releases don’t have a link to the company website - a massive oversight.
Even if you only write articles and press releases to try to get a few extra links to your website, you should assume that SOMEONE is going to read it and try to get them to come to your website as well.
What you want to do is give people a reason to come to your website. So instead of having a plain old link at the bottom of the page, provide an incentive to come to your website.
For example:
“For more information on our free office security review, visit our website at http://www……”
or, bearing in mind that local newspapers love great photographs:
“For dynamic imagery of our Management Committee, visit our website at ….”
What’s “dynamic imagery”? I’ve no idea, but I’d go to website to see what it is.
The point is, as well linking to your website, you also need to ensure that you are giving people a reason to click the link. You might even find that if the incentive to click is good enough (free stuff is always good) then you’ll have more success in getting the press release published in the newspapers. We did this by offering a free website review (now discontinued!) and ended up with a full page story in the newspaper, a video interview on the website and a link to our own website from their website!
Comments on Blogs
Blog commenting is a pretty spammy SEO technique - it does work but I wouldn’t recommend it as a single SEO technique. However, if you approach it in the correct frame of mind then you can drive some traffic to your website and position yourself as an expert at the same time.
If you’re reading a blog post and have a point of view that you would like to share then leave a comment but make sure that you link to your website (not necessarily in the body of the comment, unless you have a valid reason, but enter your website in the URL field). If your insight is good enough then people will come and check out your website.
I know, it seems unlikely. But it works. Even if no other readers of the blog come to your website, you can pretty much guarantee that the blog owner/author will come and check you out because we’re all big headed egomaniacs and we want to learn a bit more about our readers!
So don’t go nuts, spamming blogs all over the place with useless comments. But if you have a relevant insight to add to a post that is related to your website, the leave a comment. You’ll start to build a reputation as a but of an expert into the bargain as well.
Contribute to Web Forums
The principle here is the same as blog commenting. If you participate in a forum then make sure that you have a website in your profile, and if possible, have a link in your signature as well (see #1 about email signatures - try to optimise it!).
Again, you’ll position yourself as an expert and build a following. The more you post, the more people will want to learn about you and check up on you, which will naturaly drive people to your website.
If you have an option to create a profile on your forum then use that as an opportunity to market your website. When writing about yourself, give people a reason to come and visit your website (more free stuff!).
Internet Directories
Yet another easy way to get links, but steer clear of those really spammy directories full of porn sites and poker websites!
If you register with a few high quality web directories (DMOZ, FreeIndex, BT Tradespace, Scoot, Yell) then they actually drive traffic to your site. Make sure that you’re giving people a reason to click through to your website. If you’re the cheapest at what you do, or the highest quality, or the best, or you give away loads of free stuff then make sure you tell people about it.
What else
There are four easy ways to get links to your site but also drive traffic to your site. Whenever you have an opportunity to publicise yourself or your business then make sure that you include your website address and then look at how you can include a message to get people to click that link!
Do you have any other ways that you publicise your website? Leave a comment (including your website and a reason why we should visit it!) and let us know what other things we can do!
How to beat your competitors during the recession
Everywhere you look in the news, the message is the same: The world is in an economic downturn and we’re heading for a recession. The Governor of the Bank of England was saying the same thing just a couple of days ago.
One thing that struck me was that the recession was predicted for 2009 which suggests that it’s not just a case of trying to get through the current ‘downturn’ but trying to actively adapt to to what will become the norm. For a long time, people are going to be extremely careful with their money and they will be very selective about who they choose to spend their money with.
An opportunity
For the small business owner, it’s a difficult time, but if you approach it in a positive frame of mind then there are a number of fantastic opportunities for you to take advantage of.
For a start, much of your competition is going to become invisible. This is because one of the first things companies cut when times are hard is the marketing budget. Quite how they hope to attract new clients when they’re invisible to them, I don’t know, but that’s their problem. It’s great news for you because it gets rid of a whole load of your competitors and gives you a superb opportunity to get in front of a large number of potential clients. And you don’t have to do anything differently! Just don’t have a knee jerk reaction and start dropping marketing activities that have been effective in the past.
With companies cutting back their marketing, that also means that they may well be cutting back on their search engine optimisation (SEO). It could take a few months for the results to be seen but you may want to look at your competitor’s websites and see if they are slowly moving down the search results. If you continue your SEO activities or even ramp them up then you could start to dramatically move ahead of those pesky websites that have been in front of you for the past months or years!
What else can I do?
If you are finding that you have less money to spend on your marketing then you may want to consider other internet marketing activities that won’t cost you any money at all!
- If you’re not using Twitter then start using it and building a following. This introduction to Twitter article can help you.
- If you’re not carrying out regular SEO actions on your website, then start looking at what you can do yourself, or looking at what SEO companies can do for you. The MMD eBook is a great introduction to SEO for your own website.
- If you don’t have a blog, or if you haven’t been updating it recently then get back to it and start updating it regularly. See: How can blogging help my business.
- If you have a blog but haven’t been promoting it then then look at the various social networking and social bookmarking tools around, and start writing content that will attract people to your website.
In general, now isn’t a time for being rash with your marketing activities. If something has worked for you in the past then it’ll still work during these lean times - especially when your competitors are doing their best to get out of your way! But now is also the time to start being creative with your marketing. You can bet that plenty of other small businesses will be adjusting their marketing to try to attract new clients. You must do the same!
Try some of the suggestions above and please let me know how it works out for you. If you need any help then leave a comment and we’ll help you out.
Advertise your website - for FREE! Tip #1
Most of our success comes from Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) but I often speak with people who understand the benefits of SEOing their website but don’t feel that they have the time or the money to put into it. I’m asked what other things people can do which doesn’t take up any of their time and which doesn’t cost anything but which can market their website effectively.
Usually if something is free and doesn’t take much time then the results are poor, but in the first of this series, I’m going to show you a number of free, simple, yet effective ways to drive traffic to your website.
You can do all of these things yourself. They don’t require a SEO professional and you don’t need to be a techical guru. Where required, i’ll provide simple steps for you to follow.
Tip Number 1 - Use your email
Think about how many emails you send a day. It’ll vary depending on what your company does but each email you send is going to a potential website visitor. Even if you’re emailing British Gas to tell them that you didn’t want the service that they’ve signed you up for (as I’m about to do today!), the person reading that email may be interested in your product.
Many people have an email signature (a block of text that is automatically inserted into the bottom of your email). You can add whatever you want but generally most people put their contact details there.
Whatever you choose to put there, you MUST make sure that it is optimised to drive traffic to your website. You must ensure that your website address is in your signature. Ideally the website address should appear as a link so that your readers just need to click on it to get to your website rather than having to copy and paste it into their web browser.
You might even want to put your killer sales pitch or an enticement into your signature.
For example, instead of just having
http://www.massmediadesign.co.uk
You could have:
http://www.massmediadesign.co.uk - The best value widgets in the whole of the UK!
or
http://www.massmediadesign.co.uk - Visit our website for our free eBook!
That way, you’re getting your marketing message across and increasing the likelihood that someone will come to your website.
I get hundreds of emails from people asking me about our SEO services and I would say that about 50% of them don’t have their website address in their signature. This simple change could result in new leads and sales for your business, and it costs you absolutely nothing!
For simple steps on how to create a signature with a link in it, visit this article here at our sister website.
Please let me know how you get on and provide some inspriation for your fellow readers - paste your new signature into the comments field.
