Getting the most out of your SEO consultant

Having outsourced large scale SEO for the lsat five years and becoming an SEO consultant for small businesses in the last 12 months I have seen both sides of the client / agency relationship.

Getting the most out of your SEO consultant can be a challenge. From day 1 you need honesty between both parties but if you are confused as to what you are getting (or not getting) then there are 2 rules you can apply to simplify things:

(1) Detailed analysis of onpage and offpage SEO development. You will need this monthly - you could even require this more frequently if you are working with a large website that is new. It could be as simple as:

visits from SEO (and month on month / year on year change)
Number of keywords creating SEO visits
Biggest ranking improvement
External links
Pages indexed
Key actions

I think the biggest point is that you want your SEO consultant to be accountable for tangible output on a regular basis. You may have superb rankings across the board that this consultant has generated - but as the old Janet Jackson hit asks "What have you done for me lately?" Dealing with this issue of a plateau in traffic can be awkward but beware of salesmanship in this area. Yes, having someone there to be accountable in the unfortunate event of having a nose dive in traffic is good - but unless they would pull out a heap of links that you've already paid for then there is every chance that you would maintain your existing traffic level in the short term if you decided to devise a new plan or select a different SEO agency resource.

(2) Break down of your monthly payment. Within the SEO service that you have in place there are 2 main cost areas: people's time and media cost of links. Request a receipt for both - this works because you are not looking for millions of paid for links and little time spent on organising this, you are looking for the opposite...either way you will be able to see what you are paying for.

Remember, you are the customer and that SEO is not a black art. It is however an area where you can get more value by applying these rules.

Locality war - Google Places

Foursquare really have got things going. OK, it could be said that hyperlocal online activity began with Google maps directory listings and Google Local. However, in the mega enterprise world Facebook have reacted to Foursquare with Facebook places offering similar functionality but integrating into the whole Facebook offering i.e. loads of traffic.

What is different? The map position is a big change, as is the integration of the 'places' link on the left hand side.

So how could Google places change any existing built up traffic from Google Local? Well, sites like. Yell, Yelp and City visitor could be lose ranking positions to actual businesses as these results appear to be prioritised on actual business results. Paying attention to the detail like uploading photos, encouraging customer reviews and including the new rich snippets markup against your addresss on your own website all helps in this area of expansion.

What is the size of the prize? In their October 2010 statement, Google have estimated that 11% of their search is local. If you are a multiple location retailer or a single location business that relies on local custon then these changes are of high importance.

Keep monitoring actual Google results and the Official Google blog. By checking this blog on weekly basis (and the Google Webmaster blog) you will keep up with all things new that could impact positively on your business.

SEO TIPS - 2 ways to prioritise the web pages that really matter

In recent years, part of long tail strategy has been to get as many web pages indexed as possible. Now, there is a subtle difference between creating a digestable, logical site structure to maximise indexed pages and just making a lot unique pages in a blatant attempt to drive long tail traffic.

Take an example of a hotellier group. For argument's sake, there are 100 hotels in this group. Each hotel will have its local area within the website. There will be content present within the various services and features - rooms, restaurant, bar, gym and additional items. There are 2 ways to manage this content effectively:

1) Use canonical tags. Say you want a separate bar and restaurant page. You could 'canonical' back to the main local hotel page to say 'this is page to index'. This demonstrates a clear emphasis on the core page and is a pragmatic tactic to employ in your SEO.

2) Hash URLs. Put all of the rooms, restaurant, bar, gym and additional items content all on one page. Mark each sub heading with hash tags to allow the user to access the information without having to load several pages. In my mind, search engines would like this unselfish approach and there is the obvious benefit of the main local hotel web page being extremely content rich.

Before creating new pages, ask yourself 'would I find this page useful in its own right'? If the answer is no, then deal with it in one of the 2 ways. Another example of this could be consolidating contact us, about us and privacy policy all in one page or area depending on your favoured approach.

I enjoy creative SEO. Striving for the ultimate site structure is the best way to go about your onpage optimisation and will make you less dependent on a shallow one-way linking approach to your SEO.

Writing great online content for your users

When reading great SEO blogs, the same message comes back at me time and time again when focusing on content. Write for your users and the SEO benefit will come. So why do we still use news feed companies? Why do we stuff keywords into h1's and count the number of times our 'hollywood' keyword terms appear in a web page?

When you create new content for your users, you should do it with the peace of mind that if they find it relevant then so will Google. This quick article my top 3 tips about how you can write in an appealing way so that you do not alieniate your users with text overload.

1) Online grammar

Keep your readers eyes on your info.

People say to me 'will people read an article that is 2000 words long'? If you provide multiple annotations of desk research, provide thought provoking hypotheses and break up your article with relevant photographs/videos then sure they would read a long article.

The 'breaking up' part is the bit to remember.

See, I just did it then to see if you are awake!

So, ignore what you learnt in English with regards to paragraphing and break up your sentencing to allow for the scanning eyes of the internet browser.

2) Give background information from as many angles

Build trust with well researched data.

As you would with a dissertation, your users will listen to you if you cite 3rd party view points and data. For example, if you sell TVs online, then by summarising home entertainment magazine reviews and mentioning their views you will give validity as well as demonstrate a depth to your content writing that goes well past mentioning 'TVs/televisions/LCD tv's' in a spammy way!

3) Link to great information providers

Don't be greedy. (Larry/Sergey eat your heart out!)

Webmasters can obsess about trapping both the user and page rank. This doesn't demonstrate a sharing nature, and whilst you may have a nofollow policy to external links, it doesn't mean that your user would (a) know/care what this means and (b) wouldn't revisit or go back to the original page that they were on as a result of sharing this information.

If you link to suppliers or manufacturers in a small number of instances alongside rich content, there is every chance that you will be enhancing the quality of the page from an SEO point of view.

Smart link building

With link building, you have to use your time wisely. You need a positive attitude, remembering that there will be thousands of potential sites that could be deemed as 'inventory' for your particular link building campaign.

In a month, I will do the following

1) Build inventory - scan SERPS and look for blogs (1 week)

2) Viability of links - whether webmasters will entertain the placement of an inbound link (2 weeks)

3) Placement of links - giving good quality descriptions with checked URLS (1 week)

By approaching link building in this way you will view this vital area of SEO as more of a pleasurable hobby instead of an uphill battle.