Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ Category

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We have been working as a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company over the past  5 years. We have a great deal of experience in the fields of Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Internet Marketing, Online Presence Management, Conversation Rate Optimization, Local Promotion (Google Maps), Google Analytics, Landing Page Creation and Video Promotion (i.e., Youtube, Video, etc..) among others.

Due to my extensive knowledge, we are able to make valuable suggestions regarding many important changes and improvements that can be done to your website in order to increase the conversation rate of your online business. I can disclose some important information that will allow you to maintain, and even increase, robust sales for your online business even if you stop your regular Google advertisement (pay per click). Why not get a top (#1) position on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for your site? Believe it or not, but SEO can make this happen for you!!! Unlike PPC, where you are required to continually pay thousands of pounds month after month to search engines in order to advertise your site, with SEO you can obtain the number one spot for a specific keyword search term and remain in that position forever.

Have you ever wondered if you are getting quality visitors to your website? Is your site optimised to appear at the top of all major search engines for the keywords people are searching for your product or service? Are you getting the desired result?

Before you consider doing any SEO with a big or famous marketing company realise that retaining a brand name to do this work is unnecessary. You only need an experienced website design and SEO comany such as ourselves to get high quality results at affordable prices. There is no reason to look any further than to acquire our skills to help you achieve online success in the fastest most cost effective manner.

We would appreciate it if you gave us a chance to work on your website. You will surely see that we can deliver excellent results in a short period of time. If you are satisfied with my services, we can arrange a long-term professional relationship. You only need to give me an opportunity to prove my capabilities. We will provide our client’s testimonials, our website package information and other supporting documents (if necessary) to demonstrate that we are qualified. You may place a low-cost, commitment free trial work order with us at anytime.

Every week a client / friend or a random associate sends us an email that has been bulk emailed to them (spam) telling them their website can be ranked higher, be more successful, get more visitors (you get the idea) and our reponse is normally something along the lines of the info below,

Thanks for forwarding this to us, its a simple advertising / bulk spam email from a rip-off SEO company that is saying your site could be better to attract visitors from the search engines. I have told you about this before via email (the term for it is SEO – Search Engine Optimisation) If you want us to give some further advice / quote on improving your site for the search engines then thats fine. A ‘full-fat’ SEO project takes 3 months and costs £900 + content but we can work to any budget you have. Indeed just looking over my previous suggestions along with a few more I would suggest would cost only 2-3 hundred pounds but improve your site by about 40% (in SEO terms)  Look forward to hearing from you.

In general ignore all unsolicited emails from unheard of companies promising so much for so little, we can give full impartial advice about the health of your website and your ranking potential in the search engines.

Received the following email today and pretty sure there will be people taking him up on the ‘offer’. Google are not naive and the power of link networks are negligible now after recent changes to the way it works out hot to position each website for each search query. If you receive any such email promising ‘anything’ relating to search positioning then hit the delete button.

We are a worldwide search engine optimization company specializing in off page SEO.  Have you been struggling to gain first page presence for your website or web business in Google?  If so, please continue reading as we have a no risk no obligation offer for you.

We offer pay per performance SEO.  This means we will move your website to the first page of google for a set fee per month.  You pay nothing upfront, meaning you send us your URL and keyword and we add your website to our link network.  Once your keywords make it to the first page of Google, you then subscribe to our service.  If you do not subscribe or continue to subscribe, we will remove your link from our network and your rankings return to normal.

If this is something you are interested, please respond to this email. If this is not your interest, don’t worry, we will not email you again.  This message is can spam compliant and is one time only.  If you feel like you have been added to our list in error, please reply with remove to opt out, although we can assure you , you will not be emailed again.

We are experts in understanding, implementing and maximising the key factors for online success.

1. Top Quality Targeted Traffic

Get to the top of Google – Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn

Video Optimisation – YouTube, Daily Motion, Vimeo

Online Credibility – Review Sites, Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Article Submission

2. Web Site Functionality

Targeted Web Pages – Each page in your site should be specific & convert Traffic

Online Credibility – Your web site should say who you are as a business (legal requirement to show address)

Web Site Performance – Does your web site sell or is it just a way of telling people your address?

Usability – Can people easily navigate your site?

3. Data Capture & Lead Management

Data Capture – The most overlooked part of Online Success but the most Important

Lead Management – You need software that captures emails and contact details and then allows you to  store and filter your leads.

CRM – You need software that allows you to set diary reminders for call backs, email campaigns & appointments

Marketing – You need software that easily allows you to email market to your growing database

4. A Partner You Can Trust

Established – We are one of the very few companies who provide all of this in one easy package specifically for small business owners

History - We have been doing this for many years and have helped many companies achieve success

Affordable – You will be amazed at how affordable this package is and has been designed specifically for you
To find out what we do, how we do it and see testimonials from people we have helped in the past, feel free to browse our site.

We continue to promote the websites we have built and website’s bulit by other website design / SEO companies in Essex and other areas and our results locally and internationally are not only very impressive they are current and simple to check, so you can be assured that we not only “talk the talk” but we can “walk the walk” also. The following sample exchange gives you an idea about the thoughts of a website owner thinking about improving their website by giving the SEO project to Delicious Webdesign.

[Website needing Help] I have been looking at seo , reading it up and a friend has told me that he pays some yank company £10 a month for entry into directories that has boosted his site, i also see other people are talking about loads more back and or forward links etc. Its clear from search for other products that some companies somehow have the knowledge to get on the first google page, so i want to spend some money with the right company to deliver some measurable improvements, in search and image search*

So, can you provide me the full monty service or if you cant fit us in your work schedule can u recommend another website design /  specialised SEO company?  This means I want a search for my main search term to be somewhere, today in Google I gave up looking on page 25.  Same for images, we come nowhere, but when i search for oriental umbrellas in images, my image on your site comes up, but not my site!! ( ps on your site can u put a link to my site on your page). Additionally I will send u a mail soon for a few changes to the website. I have also briefly talked to someone eles, but u are saying similar. I would much rather use your company. So will call u in next few days to dicuss, as i want to start asap to let the changes bed in by end of April.

[Website Company to improve website]  As previously stated we can optimise / promote or SEO your website, simple link building may harm the website and without expert knowledge you cannot know that the changes made for £10 a month makes any difference. Your site this month has had 600 visitors but the same month (30 days) last year it only had 280 visitors (over 100% increase due to having a search engine friendly site and the site growing naturally or organically). Obviously we can review all the stats as part of a SEO project for your website and part of that would be to focus on keywords and identify the most popular and appropriate keywords for your website and optimisation of it.

Your main search term is searched for over 8000 times monthly in the uk and 200,000 globally, so it is a relevant and valuable keyword to rank for but as such its more competitive than other keywords, another main search term is searched for less globally but more locally (UK is 12,000 searches) so info like that needs to be discovered and acted on to optimise correctly.  We have links to your site already on our website’s portfolio and have had them there since the site was built – the links are optimised using ‘anchor text’ and relevant surrounding text. Your images do feature in google images but this is an area we can optimise for you.

We can provide the full monty seo package or a cut down version and can demonstrate success with both (search ‘essex builders’ we have 3 clients in the top 10 and for an International SEO term search ‘padi idc’ and we have a website in the top 3 results on all the search engines results pages).

The link above is to our generic SEO package  but would need to tweak this package to suit you and can tell you I would need Louisa (our webcopy girl) to create a lot more content (webcopy / text) for your site as part of any SEO project we do on your site. Your pending changes can be done as part of the SEO project. Additionally it may be valuable if you could tell me a budget you want to work to for this work and if you are willing to do any SEO work that I recommend yourself? Hope this sounds interesting for you

[Website needing Help] I would like to go with you for some SEO work.  Please can you make the website maintenance changes as agreed previously shortly. Regarding the SEO Work, here are my initial ideas:

1. Additional webcopy / text for the new and existing pages.
2. Images – i believe the keywords, should be embedded in every picture
3. Please do all optimisation possible on every page (onsite optimisation)
4, Links from other sites into my site, is that called backward links? seems these are very important. The other company I was talking so said that they actually telephone other directories or relevant sites to get them to link to me, not sure if that was true, but would like to understand how you will build those links, presumably you research the product type and find relevant directories and sites.
5. I need to kind of measurement of success, i.e the site moves up the listings, visits increace etc, can we agree a baseline now for the zero measurement pre work starting. I will send u other terms that worked in Google adverts.
6. International- I have sold most to USA and Italy, so maybe the Italian words for patio umbrellas should be embedded, I will do some research on some foreign terms to include.
Budget – lets discuss  and agree the services and price, but not a problem, happy to start asap , please send me an  invoice for the SEO project.

I have disabled Google adwords about three weeks ago to help with the zero baseline measurement of traffic

Last year I sold  some to opera and theatre companies, and fashion photographers. So over next 3 months we will be marketing to

• Film and TV props companies
• Theatre Companies
• Opera Companies
• Garden Designers
• Fashion photographers
• Hotel and Bar equipment suppliers
• Garden shows, county shows etc
• Tatler magazine , and county life  and other magazines. If you look at many home and garden, women’s magazines many have small features about new products, this is an area we need to come up in when they research (not sure how that’s done)

So these are our main target markets, all of the above and rich people who don’t blink an eye at spending £300 quid on our products ( We sold 10 to the same lady in Italy who owned a massive hotel). we are not targeting Joe Public as they cost too much. Please bear in mind these target markets in the SEO activities and your research.

If you want year on year increases like one of our client’s websites shown in the below Google Analytics statistics graphic you should consider us to build and promote your website

Your website is your shop front to the world; understand how hard your website is working for you with a Website and SEO Healthcheck once we take on your website for a a SEO program. We’re always looking for new ways to help you grow your website business. We use a collection of useful marketing aids, helpful tips and practical advice to help you engage with customers and successfully promote your website and your business. It’s completely free as part of our SEO package, additionally you will:

• You also have access to a dedicated SEO and Marketing Consultant.
• Practical advice, hints and marketing insights
• Get guides on how to set-up your business up on Facebook and Google Places
• A complimentary website healthcheck, if you don’t have a website, information on how a website could benefit your business

Had a recent conversation regarding this recently, if you have an ecommerce website and are unsure about selling to different countries around the world you need to have a .com domain and set it up with Google to target ‘no specific country’ to allow it to feature in every area. The following exchange demonstrates and explains how you can ensure your website will be visible to the whole world (if that’s what you decide is best for your business.

[Website Owner] I’m trying to add some domain names to my site. I want a .sg, .cn and .jp added and I’ve found a few sites do you have any knowledge of doing this? Some are asking for all the details of the host etc. Are you able to do this or can you give me any advice on adding them? I have some new domains to attach to the site. What info do you need for this?

[Website Design Company] and bit confused to be honest, what are you trying to do / achieve as it didn’t really make sense. I am assuming you are considering buying domains that are specific to countries that you want to sell to.

[Website Owner] Yes, we have bought a .sg (and also one for japan .jp and one for china .cn) and want them attached to the site to redirect the traffic

[Website Design Company] Think you have got the wrong idea about these domains. Buying domains in specific countries doesn’t specifically attract traffic from that country by attaching them to your main site. If you want to open your website up to the world we will need a .com domain then to redirect the .co.uk to the .com then will need us to do inform google via webmaster tools that we are not UK only.

[Website Owner] I was informed by a friend who designs websites to get a .sg because he works a lot in Singapore and said the market for my kind of stuff is big there. I can get a .com but mainly wanted to concentrate on those countries?  Can we still direct traffic from the .sg to the co.uk? Are you saying that I basically should have got a .com if I want to sell worldwide, as re-directing from a .com to the co.uk wouldn’t be very efficient?

[Website Design Company] Your friend has either not-understood what you want to do or you have misunderstood him. Designing websites is one thing but the ‘business or SEO’ side of website business is another thing altogether.
To attract traffic from a country you either need a country domain relevant to that country (.co.uk  / .jp etc) or a .com and target that country specifically, as you had already purchased a .co.uk domain when we started the project we built the website on that one but on reflection it looks like a .com would be more appropriate / relevant to you and the business.  A .com domain can also be set to not target any country specifically and attracts traffic from all areas. There are multinational companies (ebay / amazon) that have .com and then country specific domains but that relies on having unique / relevant ecommerce stores on each domain and each are updated / maintained. I would suggest that if you wanted to sell worldwide there are other factors to consider (what countries you want to ship to and the postage costs).  It’s possible to transfer your existing .co.uk domain to a .com one but as the website / database / ecommerce system is in place this will take approximately 3-4 hours and will take more than a week to transfer it completely and then between 1 week and 3 weeks for Google / Yahoo / Bing to re-index your site and to acknowledge that you are now not targeting the UK market only.

if you had unique / relevant websites on your other domains (.jp .sg domains) they could be used as a SEO tool to attract traffic to your .com domain (or .co.uk) domain but I would suggest attracting traffic to a .co.uk domain would be less efficient that attracting it to the universally accepted .com domain.

Regarding your last comment about the .com domain that’s correct, selling worldwide is a ‘big deal’ and think you should stick with the .co.uk. But also happy to transfer to a new .com but obviously there is time / effort and costs associated with doing this. I will add that .co.uk domains appear in the global Google search engine (google.com) so you could attract business from those countries but need to setup these countries and the postage costs in your ecommerce system.

[Website Owner] And once I have set up shipping etc on the site, how can we attract more traffic from those countries? About the ‘attracting customers from those certain countries’. Anymore I can do to specifically target them without actually having to advertise there? As in nothing I can do regarding the website, to do this.

[Website Design Company] The site needs to be bursting with unique products / unique text / descriptions to attract any traffic. I would suggest you give us the text for the shipping page and perhaps create a ‘about us ‘ text also.

To target countries specifically you will need the .com and transfer your website, then you can choose to target one country specifically or target no country specifically and therefore appear in all local versions of Google. We have other clients with .com domains that sell worldwide by not targeting any country specifically (in Google Webmaster tools).

[Website Owner] I do have international orders coming in from the US so I’m not to fussed about transferring it to a .com, and was just under the illusion that directing the traffic from the .sg domains etc, would help sales in these areas.

do you have any knowledge of doing this? Some are asking for all the details of the hoster etc.Are you able to do this or can you give me any advice on adding them?

[Website Design Company] thinking over all we discussed last night, and as I have bought the domains I would like to use them and have the traffic re-directed to the co.uk please. I might as well make use of them, even though as you say, they wont produce much traffic and Im hoping that having a local .sg might encourage the average Singaporian? Its probably a good idea to have domains of vintagengland in my possession the end of the day.

So if you could do this that would be great, let me know what you need.

[Website Owner] Sorry to keep repeating myself but don’t think you have got this point. Redirecting an empty domain to a real domain will make 0% difference I am assuming you have now bought the .jp and .sg domain and when someone types in that in the address bar of their browser you want it redirected to your .co.uk.website

We have done this for other clients but its as they previously owned the domain, have previously used that domain on flyers or business cards or use it for emails but unless a domain has unique content it will make 0% difference unless you are actively marketing the .sg domain offline. Google will not index a domain that simply redirects to another domain.

Happy for you to come here and let me show you this in practise and I hope you know I have spent time trying to explain this to you as I want you to be a success and want your website to bring in traffic but the way you have been advised and the way you want this to go seems a waste of time / effort / money and is pointless

[Website Owner] I didn’t know it would make 0% difference, I thought maybe a little, from what you said. But if its 0% then I take your word for it. With the google adverts, can you target certain countries?

[Website Design Company] Yes in Google Adwords you can target countries very specifically.

Link Building is a valuable practise in any SEO (Website Optimisation) Project but we constantly get emails asking weather or not to take up an offer of a free link. In general there is no such thing as a ‘free link’ and the company offering it will expect a link back to another website. We generally instruct clients to ignore the link requests as it potentially breaks Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and could harm your site, here is an example email received and forwarded to us from a client this week:

We are SEO experts and I personally am the webmaster of our companies website. We have selection of websites well maintained that can be suitable to delicious-webdesign.com in SEO terms; topic, page rank, content and more. We have few web-solution suggestions for you and I would like to tell you more about them. If you are interested, I’ll be more than happy to send you the additional information and elaborate how I can assist your site achieve higher rankings & traffic.

As a liaison for a variety of clients, we are in constant pursuit of quality websites to partner with us for mutual growth, as I’m sure you are, too. Your site has compelling content, and I look forward to further exploring its pages. In the meantime, I would like to offer you a one-way link on our site, which is the most powerful link in Google’s point system. This opportunity will…

• Contribute to the number of in links your site has
• Increase your site’s visibility to the search engine crawlers
• Increase your site’s visibility to people using search engines

 and, in turn…

• Help move your site up in the search rankings.
• Drive traffic and/or sales to your site.
•  We will place your link at [page reference given that is a page of hundreds of links !]

 That said, we would love for you to check out our client site and provide a one-way link back to it. We would greatly appreciate the gesture, as our client is growing and looking for increased traffic in a similar industry through one-way links.

Beware of SEO cowboys or link building scam emails or telephone calls, the following is a collection of those  received by clients – invariably they go on stating the obvious and promising to give a ‘comprehensive report’ that turns out to be anything but comprehensive:

——————
[Essex SEO Company] I enjoyed exploring your website. I have prepared a  on your website’s online presence and its performance. If you are interested we can discuss on this report. I can schedule a online conference with you and share my desktop and show you the report. The report has important insights on:

How your competitors are doing?
How your Keywords are performing?
Number of indexed pages to your website?
Your current Pagerank.

Please forgive the direct approach I was looking at your website which currently has 4 links and a Open Site Explorer homepage score of 19/100. Your backlink profile (other websites that link to you) is the single most important factor determining where you rank in search engines. (You can see more details of your links at open site explorer)

The main targeted keyword for your website receives over 30,000 searches each month in the UK on Google alone. I wondered what difference it would make to your business if there was an increase in relevant / local traffic making it to your website that would manifest itself in more emails / phone calls and invariably sales.

Your title tag may not be optimised to position you to complete with websites of similar authority and subsequently drive the largest amount of targeted traffic possible.  Your website could see a significant increase in traffic by building links to it as well as optimising the structure and keywords of the content. I’d like to offer you a free in-depth website audit covering these and many other important factors along with what could be done to improve your current rank.

I’m sure you receive many generic sales emails offering business services. I hope in taking the time to find out a bit about your website before contact you will go some way to proving our SEO project is a credible professional business that goes the extra mile for our customers. Hopefully, together we can establish a positive internet presence for your website that would bring you more business and in turn greater ROI. There is no obligation on your part to hire us after the conference.

[Website Owner] Hi, Your suggestion comes at a good time as we were talking about this recently. We would be interested to see your report and welcome your reply, we do not see the need for a online conference but if you can send a report to us in word or pdf format we can consider your findings and perhaps engage you to work for us to make the website better.

[SEO Company] Thanks for your quick reply. As per our discussion, I am providing the detailed analysis of your website below:
Page Index By Google: 251
Back-ward links: 6
Canonicalization Issue: Found
HTML Validation: 6 Errors
Reverse IP: 198 other sites found.
Let me know if you have any updates for me. Waiting for your reply.

[Website Owner] This is hardly a detailed analysis ? I expected a report
—————————

On investigation both companies that send the SEO emails had new websites with only mobile addresses and no postal address on the site (against regulations) additionally both website werent even optimised!