website seo

SEO Copywriting Vs Print Copywriting

Time and time again we get businesses asking ‘for a ‘bit of content’ for their websites and time and time we explain the importance that those words on the page are not just there to look good or to sell what you do in a traditional sense. They have a much more significant duel role to play in today’s online world.

To those on the inside it is all to easy to presume that everyone understands the importance, and differences of quality seo copywriting to traditional advertising of print based offerings. The former is quite straightforward to write and generally speaking what you see if what you get but with seo copy there is a major underlying factor to consider – keywords.

In many ways your business online is COMPLETELY different to anything offline as for the majority of the time your brand is invisible. People don’t know which website they’re on half the time, anyway. If you’ve never seen people in usability testing fail to realise they’ve moved to a different site, check out these people trying to log into facebook last week on readwriteweb.

There is no doubt that if you approach a traditional copywriter, used to the world of brochures and the odd magazine feature then they may well offer a cheaper service but as a business owner you need to think very seriously about what you will get as an end product. After all, what use is pretty copy if no one can find it?!

below we have captured a few of the main reasons for employing a quality seo copywriting expert over a cheaper solution….

If you want your site to demonstrate expertise (or passion for that matter), you’re going to have to pay. First up, you need some proper expertise. But you’re not just paying for the expertise – most writers can knock out a quick “how to” with a bit of background research.

The key is understanding what needs to be said to achieve those keyword densities and also to attract links and a recent SEOMoz survey found that rather than the accepted 400 word mark you are actually more likely to get ‘linked to’ with 1,800+ words on a page!

The issue is saying what you need to say in the fewest words. People read 25% slower on the web. And for every 100 words you add, only 18 are read on average. So the trick with expertise is to have genuinely insightful copy that’s edited to as few words as possible – and, for obvious reasons, few copywriting services charge on the basis of giving you fewer words than you asked for …

Concerningly also a recent piece in one industry magazine stated that “the race is on to use data and automation to produce content that people (and advertisers) want at as low a price as possible.” Thankfully one of the opinion pieces alongside it made an absolute mockery of that kind of thinking. How and why would a human being want such machine created dribble?!

It was also recently noted that on average a national newspaper would pay near £400 for each piece it ends up running. That is what quality, original copy really costs if you want it done properly. And short content for a website is even harder to produce!

To talk to us about your seo copywriting needs or simply to get a little more advice call us on 01733 348022 and we’ll do our best to help.

Avoid ‘Black Hat’ SEO

If you have been researching the website seo, or search engine optimisation market, then chances are you may have come across soemthing known as Black Hat SEO. This kind of SEO is designed to attempt to fool the search engines into ranking your pages higher than their intrinsic worth should really allow.

In theory that sounds great, and perhaps five years ago you may have had some success with such an approach but search engine spiders are no longer dumb enough to fall for many of the ‘celebrated’ black hat techniques and our advice is always to avoid this area at all costs.

As with any type of SEO it can pay to know what you are talking about before asking any website SEO company to quote you to work on your website and so we have compiled this short but sweet guide to basic black hat seo techniques to be wary of should they ever be offered to you. Just say ‘No’!

Hidden Content

Top of our list of black hat SEO techniques is hidden content. Hidden content comes in many guises but the basic principle is that within the code for the site there will be content stuffed with keywords, this content will not be visible to the end user of the site. One way of doing this is by using comment tags. The real purpose of comment tags is for developers to add in useful reminders within their code explaining what that piece of code does.

Another popular way of hiding content is the use of the <noscript> tag. The <noscript> tag should be used to inform a user that a script is being used but their browser either doesn’t support the script

Meta Keyword Stuffing

There are two Meta tags that are generally used to inform search engines of the content on the page. They reside between the <head> tag of a page and when used incorrectly they can alert a search engine that a site is using spam techniques in an attempt to improve its ranking.

Gateway Pages

Doorway or Gateway pages are pages designed for search engines and not for the end user. They are basically fake pages that are stuffed with content and highly optimized for 1 or 2 keywords that link to a target or landing page. The end user never sees these pages because they are automatically redirected to the target page. Off-the-shelf SEO software often encourages the use of gateway pages as do SEO firms that don’t know what they’re talking about. Search engine spiders are being enhanced continually to detect these pages and will get ignored or worse still, flag your site up as being spam and ban you all together.

Link Farms

In the real world if you were to build your house in a bad neighbor hood then your house would be affected by its surroundings. The same is true of the virtual world. Link farms or free for all pages have no other purposes than to list links of unrelated websites. They won’t provide you with any traffic and you run the risk of having your site banned for participating.

So there you have it. That, in a nutshell, is black hat SEO. As with all kinds of technical work, however, those working on black hat seo are always trying to stay ahead of the game but our advice is that the risk is certainly not the reward and stick to trusted White Hat SEO companies like Zazzle Media, Peterborough.

Top 10 Website SEO Tips for 2010

2010. It is here (well almost as we write this at least) and with it comes a tide of predictions for everything from football and politics to business and SEO. The Zazzle Media team couldn’t let the opportunity go without at least attempting to pull together some of our own thoughts on what may lie ahead in the world of SEO for the new year ahead. So withoutout further ado we bring you the Top 10 Website SEO tips for 2010…

First up is the announcement by Google that it will be adding ‘real time search’ to certain search page results. Real time search is not a new concept as and has been around for sometime now, but with the recent explosion of sites like Twitter and Facebook, Google is trying to improve their algorithm in order to improve this technology. Real time search would include things like status updates from Facebook and recent tweets from Twitter. Not every search query would trigger real time search results, but popular or hot topics and trends would be something that causes real time search information to be included in your search queries.

This is yet another reason why you and your business need to have Twitter and Facebook pages. If you don’t, your competitors will. Other than social media starting to make a bigger impact on search engine results, another new ranking factor being talked about is page speed. Have you ever been on a website that takes forever to download? Sure we all have and it’s pretty annoying. Well, Google also feels the same way and they are talking about the speed of web pages being a new factor in ranking. If two sites have equally beneficial information, but one loads twice as fast, then the faster website is going to rank higher. It just makes sense.

If your website has a lot of graphics or videos that take a while to buffer, then you need to re-think your design. If you have a site that is plagued by these kinds of inefficiencies then you definitely must do something to cut down on the file sizes of your pictures and videos. Even without Google adding that into their algorithm, it’s just good business sense to provide your visitors with a quality site that is easy to browse and quick to download. When designing and building a website you should always think like a user or web visitor.

So to sum it all up, in 2010 and beyond you will need to get more active in social marketing and you need to have a web design that allows for fast downloading. You also need to create unique and compelling content and update it more frequently. Getting active in social media sites can help you showcase your new content with links to it or quotes about it. It can also help spread brand awareness and keep up with the Internet community as a whole. Things change quick Online and the more active you are, the quicker and easier it will be to keep up with changes.

Website SEO Secret Tips!

Here’s a collection of SEO tips covering some frequently-asked questions about Google, buying and building new websites, and building links. You’ll almost certainly find something in this grab bag you didn’t know before that you can use in your next SEO campaign, all courtesy of the team here at Zazzle Media…

Get a Second Listing

If you’re up on Google for a good keyword, you can get a second indented listing for that keyword by creating another page on the same topic. This will essentially double your traffic for a keyword, and bump down one of the competitors.

To get a second indented listing you need to create a page with similar keyword focus. Content on both pages should be 100% different, without the slightest hint of duplicity. This also goes for <title> and <H tags>.

Once you have that page ready, promote it by placing links with targeted anchor text from high PR pages. In some cases internal links aren’t enough (in competitive markets), so you’ll need to build external links. Don’t forget to include a link from the home page.

Slow Results

Search engine optimization can be a waiting game. You create pages, invest time in content, build links, get directory listings, but results are not yet showing up. It’s been a month… what did I do wrong?

Many people will go back, remove links, restructure internal links, work on content, change titles and make all kinds of adjustments. Search engine optimization is a slow process. It takes several months to get results on Google, and those months can be frustrating, especially if you only have one website.

When results don’t show up, do not worry; give it up to three months. Instead of going back and changing everything, invest time in new ideas, content, links or other domains.

Only after learning that what you did does not work should you go back and make adjustments; otherwise, if you did not wait, how do you know it did not work? SEO is a slow process that requires patience. Many SEOs sometimes create a site, throw some content on it, get a couple of directory links, build a few more links and let that site mature. Then they go back several months later for heavier work.

If you only have one property to take care of, you’re actually at an advantage. You can invest time in quality content development, networking and link building while waiting for results to show up.

If you don’t want to build a website from the ground up, you can buy an existing website and leverage its link power and age to your search ranking advantage.

Buying Old Domains

Buying old domain names is generally a good SEO strategy, since old domain names are trusted by Google a lot more than the new ones. By buying an old domain name, you cut off several months of “trust building” and can get included quickly for relatively competitive terms.

Buying Old Websites

There are many old websites, with authoritative old links on old domains that are no longer maintained by the site owner, or are under monetized. You can purchase those websites and start out with a good trust level, old links and good page rank. Ranking existing sites is a LOT easier than ranking new ones, especially if the old site is related to your targeted keywords.

Redirecting Link Power from an Old Domain to the New One

If you purchase a new domain, but want to maintain the link power of the old domain, you can redirect the old domain to the new one. Google and Yahoo usually pass link power through redirects if done properly.

Keep your old domain registered and live. If it goes down, so will the redirect, causing your new site to lose all the link power it was passing. It costs several bucks to keep the domain alive, but can cost many hours or several grand to replicate its link power.

Quick Website SEO Tips

If there is one thing we all need more of it is time. With so many other things to look after in business the performance of your website from an SEO perspective is probably the last thing on your mind.

Because rankings are so important now to almost every business the vast majority of owners outsource this valuable work to expert SEO agencies like Zazzle Media so we can do all the hard work and keep your website up to date and allow you to concentrate on making money!

If, however, you do fancy doing a few quick website SEO bits for yourself, simply to aid your understanding here are a few basic quick wins for you to tackle:

1. Page Titles

Page titles are a very important part in search engines finding your website. The keywords in the page title are of some of the most important thoughout your whole website as they tell search engines what your page is about. The process of finding the right keywords can be extremely complex but if you just want to do the very basics you can simply follow this format -  add ‘Page Description | Website Name’. This puts the important keywords that your industry determines first and then your own brand name afterwards.

2. Content

The next most important thing involved in SEO for your website is the seo content. The robots scan your website for all the keywords it can find. Headlines and lists are the most prominent in importance to the search engines, they check these first and dig deeper in to the paragraphs later on.

An easy way to make sure your website stays SEO friendly without trying too hard to cram in keywords everywhere is the just keep scanability in mind. Most users on the internet do not read everything that is on the screen, they look over headlines, lists, excerpts, pullquotes, etc, and read further when something catches them.

3. Links

After regularly refreshed and bespoke content and accessibility of your website the next most important thing are links. Without them yoiu have little chance of ranking well for any keyword you choose. The key is to balance the number being added to your content though as too many can have negative effects. We can help you with this process.

So there you have it. A handful of very basic things to try to make it easier for customers to find your website. For more in depth or expert SEO help please do not hesitate to contact us.

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