Introduction

Whether you’ve just started investing in SEO, or you’ve been investing for many years, most business owners want to know what the Google Panda update is all about.

That’s because the Panda update is one which crops up time and time again on SEO news websites.

The reason being is the Panda update was not a one-off occurrence, instead it was an algorithm change that is regularly being updated.

The purpose is to weed out websites that try and fool the algorithm into thinking they have implemented quality seo work, when in matter of fact they have not.

So, if you want to learn a thing or two about the Google Panda update, you’ve come to right place.

Which sorts of websites did the Panda update punish?

In a nutshell if your onsite seo efforts are not white hat, well those websites could be impacted by Panda.

But to be more specific here’s a list of the types of websites that got affected. 

Content thin

Ever landed on a website and it just hasn’t got much text. Perhaps this has even affected a buying decision, for example you may have wanted to purchase a new jumper, but there just wasn’t any information on what material it was made from, or which sizes are available.

Such a page could be deemed as content thin, meaning there’s just not much information. It’s thought that some websites, which were deemed as content thin were impacted by Panda.

Spammy

We all those these types of websites, they try and cut corners, often the business will have gone with an seo agency that charges cheap prices, but the seo is often as equally as cheap.

An example of spammy seo would be this, say you were looking for a skip hire business, yet when you go the website, they have a very long list stating “skip hire + city”- but the website mentions loads of cities or towns.

This is rubbish seo, and often its these sorts of businesses that were affected by Panda.

Duplicated content

Websites that have duplicated content were affected by Panda. For instance, a business may retail a product, say a electronic toothbrush for example, yet instead of writing their own product description, the business may have just copied and pasted from the manufacturer.

A business simply shouldn’t have duplicated content, most seo agencies, including ours think it is far better to write your own product descriptions, and to ensure all other content marketing is original content marketing.

Improving

Some businesses falsely believe that the Panda update was rolled out just once. That’s to say some businesses believe if they haven’t been affected when the update rolled-out, well they must now be home and dry.

However, this is not the case, as Panda is now incorporated into Google’s algorithm, and many experts believe is being improved.

This simply means that Google is constantly weeding out businesses that do not adhere to white hat seo standards.

So, this means just because your digital marketing agency hasn’t implemented low quality seo yet, doesn’t mean that this cant happen in the future.

Therefore, it’s always worth the business having some idea of how Panda works, and making sure if needs be they keep the seo agency in check.

So how should our business be creating content marketing?

This has to be one of the most over used words in SEO, and that word is “quality”. And we appreciate that the word quality today is a pretty vague one, as after all its used to describe everything from sausages to luxury cars.

However, when it comes to content marketing, we mean quality in the following sense:

Is useful

If you put yourself in an seo consultants shoes for just a second, that consultant may be tasked with writing content marketing for many different businesses.

And what can happen is the marketing consultant may be overstretched, which can mean that some marketing agencies create poor quality content marketing.

Often what happens is content is written, yet it created to satisfy a set word count. So you guessed it, 500 words are written but its likely to be a dull read, one which hasn’t got any useful information.

So how do you create better content marketing? Well, that’s simple, instead you create content marketing that will be useful to your target customer.

For example, say you run a business that retails kitchens, you could create content marketing that advises customers on which options allow your customers to save space. For example, there may be additional options that allow customers a place to store their wine bottles, or a system that allows foot items to be rotated, rather than stacked in a cupboard.

This would be useful content marketing, that’s opposed to content marketing that simply attempts to get the business to rank higher for “kitchen retailers”.

Google’s set of questions

This is an interesting article if you wish to learn more about the Google Panda update.

Quality

As mentioned earlier, the main focus when writing content marketing is producing quality work.

That is work which is useful.

Bounce rate

When your business publishes a new blog post, or page on your website, you should monitor that page’s bounce rate.

If a lot of readers bounce straight off the page, meaning they leave more or less straightaway then this can be sign that the content marketing is not useful.

The reason for this is if the blog post was interesting, and offered the answers the person was looking for, then the reader is unlikely to leave the website.

Therefore, your digital marketing agency should aim to reduce your websites bounce rate.

White hat agency

Does your business require help with its SEO? If so, then why not give us a ring? We offer affordable prices, and we only ever implement white hat seo.

Introduction

There are quite simply loads of guides that explain local seo in an over complicated way. This only serves to confuse business owners, and to sometimes put them off investing in SEO altogether.

However here at this digital marketing agency we do things differently. We are different at this agency because we don’t bore our clients socks off by using complicated marketing jargon.

No, we do things differently. We explain things clearly, this way our clients know what they are getting for their money, and this we way we have been able to retain clients for many years.

So, here’s our simple guide on how to improve your businesses SEO in seven easy steps.

#1 Obtain your Google My Business account

First things first obtain your businesses Google My Business account. This is easy to do, that’s because Google will walk you through the process.

Then all you have to do is wait for Google to mail you a postcard that has a verification pin. Once you have your pin, you simply type this in, once you’ve logged into your account, and there you have it, you will have a Google My Business account.

But don’t stop there, as any good seo company will tell you, you should add as much information as you can to your Google My Business account.

So, for example, you should add:

·        Your businesses name, address and phone number

·        Your businesses opening hours

·        A description about your business

·        Show customers pictures of your business, for example the shop front

·        You must keep your Google My Business account updated, so when you change your address you should update your business details

#2 Obtain genuine reviews on Google My Business

You should obtain genuine reviews from your customers. So, for example, say you’re a plumber, and a customer states that you have done a great job, well why not ask them to leave you a review on your Google My Business account?

This can help to improve your businesses SEO. Yet, with that said, do not write the business reviews yourself.

That’s to say don’t add fake business reviews. The reason being is Google’s algorithm will know, and then your business will not show up for searches that are relevant for your business.

For example, if you run a dental practice, and you notice all the other dentists are coming up with great reviews, well you may be tempted to write a bunch of fake reviews about your business.

However, Google’s algorithm is really clever, it will be able to spot that the reviews are fake, so when anyone is searching for a local dentist, your business will never show in the Google My Business listings.

#3 Use structured data, such as Schema

You may need the help of an seo agency for this one. Yet, its well worth adding Schema to your website.

Your seo agency may use schema to mark-up your businesses name, address and its phone number.

This will make it much easier for Googlebot to know businesses NAP information, and to then check this against your business’s citations.

 #4 Add quality content marketing

As any white hat seo business will tell you, its important to add good quality content marketing to your website on a regular basis.

And if you are aiming to improve where your business ranks locally, your seo agency should be looking to add content marketing that’s relevant to your business and the area.

For example, perhaps you run a solicitor’s practice, you may therefore wish to blog about a local business award you have just won.

Or perhaps your solicitors’ practice is raising money for a local charity or going to do a presentation somewhere within your city. This provides your business with a great opportunity to talk about how the event went, and what your business was offering.

For example, perhaps your law practice specialises in the area of divorce, in which case you may have offered your advice to a newspaper that was writing an article about divorce. This will also allow you the opportunity to talk about the advice you offered to that local newspaper.

Remember that all SEO work should be white hat, so if you are unsure how to implement white hat seo, you should talk to a respected seo business.

#5 Technical SEO

Your business may well be a start-up business, if it is you most probably have recently got your website back from a website design agency.

However, all too often a website design company just focuses on just that, the design of the website, and often the basic seo details are lacking.

So, your seo business should therefore optimise your website, by implementing white hat seo in the following areas:

·        Meta titles and meta descriptions

·        Alt tags

·        Ensuring that pages on your website has a sufficient word count, and are not “content thin”

·        Ensuring that there is no duplication issues

·        H1 to H6 tags

·        And loads of other SEO factors should be considered

#6 (NAP) Business citations

Your business should obtain business citations, this NAP information should match your website.

NAP stands for the name, address and phone number of your business.

 #7 Make sure that you refresh your knowledge on regular basis

Some people learn about seo, then let their knowledge stagnate. This is no good, as seo is always changing.

The reason for this is that Google is always improving its algorithm, so you should keep your seo knowledge up to date.

There are loads of free resources where you can learn seo, however only learn from a respected business, such as MOZ.

Introduction

Naturally, if a business is investing in something it wants to know what it is getting for its money.

This makes perfect sense, as we wouldn’t purchase say a new appliance like a washing machine unless we knew when it was going to be delivered.

So, the same can be said about SEO, if a business starts to invest, well they often want to know when the business will be listed on the first page of Google.

However, a lot of marketing agencies, that includes some of the leading business do not guarantee results when it comes to organic seo.

That may sound surprising at first, yet at the end of this article, you will be all the wiser as to why many agencies do not.

The benchmark has already been set

Google ranks websites according to how strong the websites “ranking signals” are. This means that over 200 signals are taken into account, and the websites that are strongest will rank at the top.

Yet, here’s the fundamental issue, your competitors may e already been investing many years prior to your business. So, they have had a head start.

In that time, they may have built hundreds, if not thousands of good quality backlinks. Also your competitors may have paid a marketing agency to implement hundreds of hours on onsite seo.

So in nutshell the benchmark and standard to beat, well that might be set pretty high.

What this means is that a new business that’s just starting off has to be realistic about what they can obtain with their marketing budget.

For instance, will the marketing budget allow the marketing agency to give your competitors a run for their money, or will the marketing budget be a drop in the ocean?

If the standard to beat is too high, why would anyone invest?

This is where the marketing agency and client must make a judgement, can they make good use of the marketing budget, and overtake the established competition?

Or is the bar set too high, and the marketing budget would not be enough, so that the money is more or less wasted?

Be wary of any seo business that agrees to getting your business to the top, yet does not weigh-up how strong the competition is. The reason is the business may use black hat seo, which we will describe how this works below.

Seo is hard work

There’s no two ways about it, SEO is hard work. Whether you run a solicitors practice, or you are a tree surgeon by trade, your competitors will often not give up their top place on Google without a fight.

That’s to say, some businesses now solely rely on all their new customers coming through their website.

So to overtake the competition will involve a lot of hard work by you, or your seo agency.

Yet, there will always be companies that don’t want to do the hard work, that’s to say they want to cut corners.

These are the companies that implement what is called black hat seo. These companies may agree that they will take your business to the top of Google, because quite simply they are not implementing any hardwork.

Instead they use automated methods to try and fool Google’s algorithm into thinking your website should be at the top.

However, when Google detects this black hat seo, which Google is very good at, then your website will incur a penalty.

A penalty can mean that your website drops in terms of where it ranks, and if the seo is really bad, well the business could be removed altogether.

And its also worth mentioning that sometimes it can take a very long time to recover from a penalty.

So cheap seo, and companies that state they will take you to the top of Google for little money, well are often a waste of time.

If you want to find out more about this, read more about the Google Panda, and Google Penguin updates.

It all boils down to time

This is why seo agencies are often reluctant to guarantee results, because nobody knows if a competitor will step up seo activity.

Therefore it all boils down to time, how much time is a business willing to invest in a website.

And if the business sector is massively competitive, such as the car insurance sector, well this wont be one persons time working on the businesses website, it can be many hundreds of people.

So, it all boils down to time, and which company is willing to invest the most in the best seo minds the business can find.

Introduction

If your thinking about investing in SEO, then you’ve probably already noticed that most agencies websites are full of complicated marketing jargon.

One such term that you may have come across is “301-redirects”, this is often used when advertising seo services.

Some agencies therefore say that they will be able to quickly fix any 404 pages on your website, and then implement 301-redirect where necessary.

Well its hard for any business owner to know the value of this service unless they know what a 301-redirect is.

Within this article we are going to explain clearly what a 301-redirect means, and how it may help your businesses seo.

What is a 301 redirect?

301-redirects help to fix 404 errors on your website. This means that sometimes the url on your website will be changed.

So, for instance, you may well retail luxury cars, and you may stop selling a particular brand of cars.

Instead of people looking for that brand of car being presented with a 404-page, instead a 301-redirect could be used to send the visitor to another brand of car that you do sell.

What this can do is help to keep more visitors on your website. What could happen instead is a visitor see’s a 404 page, they may see that they can not find the car that they want, and then quickly go to a competitor’s website instead.

So, a 301 redirect can be useful in terms of helping to retain visitors, plus also not lose link equity, which we will explain more on later.

404 pages 

From a customer’s perspective 404 errors can sure be annoying. Imagine just for a second your looking for a large screen t.v, ready for an important football match. You find the right t.v, the right price, yet when you click the link you land on a 404 page.

It provides the customer with the impression that the website isn’t updated, and you don’t need a marketing business to inform you that something which doesn’t work, well it doesn’t bode well on the company’s image.

So, 404 errors should be fixed by a website designer, or your marketing agency. This way you can redirect visitors to another item, and you can also send link juice through the link at the sametime.

Permanent redirects

Here’s the important stuff, you may have a top online marketing agency working for your business, and part of the seo process they may well be building backlinks for your business.

Now as most people know, good quality backlinks can mean your website goes up the rankings.

Yet, if your seo agency has built backlinks to a page that is no longer working, well those seo efforts will be a total waste of time.

This is why your seo company should implement 301-redirects to the new page. 301-redirects are considered a permanent redirect, and many seo companies believe this means that the link juice can be passed through.

So, what this means is, the links that you once had connected to the old page, the link equity can be sent to the new page. Now link equity just means the seo benefits that the backlinks bring, can now be transferred to the new page.

However, as all good digital marketing agencies will tell you, not all backlinks are good. So before your marketing agency implements a 301-redirect, they should check that the backlinks that are leading to your website are of a good quality.

Poor quality backlinks can mean that a website drops in terms of where it ranks.

Google Search Console

Your business can use Google Search Console to tell you which urls turn up with 404 errors.

How we can help

Whether your business is looking to generate more sales locally, or globally we can help. Why not give us a call today?

Introduction

It’s fair to say that SEO has been around for quite a while now. Sure, it hasn’t been around as long as some other forms of advertising, but it’s definitely nothing new.

Yet, with that said there are still countless businesses out there that haven’t invested as of yet.

These businesses may have held-off investing as they still see SEO as something they don’t fully understand.

Which is exactly why you may be reading this blog post, you may want to find out more about organic seo, and how it can help your business.

So, without further ado, lets have a look at 7 things we think you should know about organic seo.

#1 It takes a great deal of time

It’s fair to say that there are some businesses that invest in seo and then expect results to happen straightaway.

Yet for those in the know, well, they will know this is often unrealistic, and basically speaking seo takes great deal of time.

The reason being is this, the websites that appear on the first page for competitive keywords, well those businesses will have normally spent years improving their seo marketing campaigns.

Now, this is not to put you off, or to sound defeatist before you have even begun the seo process, but it is important to be realistic.

As your agency must weigh-up how strong your competitors are. This will then dictate how much work is needed, and therefore what the monthly cost is likely to be.

As your competitors may already have hundreds, if not thousands of good quality backlinks for example, so often there’s much catching up to do.

#2 Cheap seo is a false economy

Most of us will have bought something that has let us down because it was cheap. Whether that’s a car, or superglue, what’s for sure it can be a rather annoying experience.

As the old saying goes, buy cheap and you often end up paying twice. Yet with seo things can get even more complicated.

The reason being is some companies hire a cheap seo company, and then find that they are not delivering. So obviously you would change to another seo agency, right?

Well yes, but sometimes the first company will have made such a mess of the seo, so much so the website may now have incurred a penalty.

A penalty can be caused because of rubbish backlinks being built for example.

A penalty can mean that the website suffers a drop-in terms of where it ranks, or in a worst case scenario, it can even be removed from Google, or another search engine altogether.

Its also worth bearing in mind that when a website does incur a penalty, well it can take many months and even in some cases years to get back to where it used to rank.

So a word to the wise, only invest in quality seo.

#3 Location

Think about the location of where the marketing agency is based. If the commute requires hours of travelling, well you do have to ask is that practical?

It’s true that seo reports are a great way of finding out how well the marketing campaign is going, yet you’re still going to want a meeting every now and then.

#4 Over-optimisation

Over optimising a website means that again a website could incur a penalty. Often a business will want to rank for a certain keyword, let’s say “emergency locksmiths” for example, then the company in question may over use this term throughout their website.

There are other ways to over optimise a website as well, and this is worth bearing in mind. If you’re in any doubt its always worth paying a respected seo company for help.

#5 A website can go up, and it can also go back down again

Its worth knowing that seo can move a website up the ranks, yet it’s possible that your likely to have several competitors also working on their own seo as well. That is why a website can move up the ranks, and then sometimes move back down.

This constant movement, and the competition wanting to also climb to the top, is why organic seo is a constant process.

#6 Organic seo is continuous

Some businesses will look to pay a one-off fee for online marketing. Yet, most businesses pay monthly in order for their organic seo to improve.

The reason that most businesses pay monthly is because most businesses face stiff competition.

If your business ranks at the very top, this means the competition will be trying to obtain that position for their own business.

This means that your company website is in constant competition to stay where it is or improve.

#7 Algorithm updates will detect low quality seo

You can have some businesses that implement low quality seo, then on the other hand there are some marketing agencies that sit on the fence.

What we mean by this is that some businesses will implement seo that takes shortcuts, and these shortcuts may not mean that the business gets hit straightaway by a penalty.

Therefore, some seo agencies use such methods to save time. However, the respected agencies like our marketing agency, well we know its only a matter of time before all low quality seo methods get penalised.

So, its only worth in our opinion investing in quality work. That’s the type of work where your agency has spent great deals of time working on, and which can be deemed white hat.

Why not give us a call?

If your business requires help with its digital marketing then why not give us a ring?