Branding strategy > This is all about creating awareness of your company and not necessarily about driving sales. It’s about the volume of impressions, which in other words means that the more people type in a keyword and see your website, the greater the impression you create. Keywords that would be used for a branding strategy are broad terms such as ‘furniture’ or ‘jewellery’.

Acquisition strategy > When users have an idea of what they want to buy, they will type in a more specific phrase into a search engine. This is where you need an acquisition strategy to make these potential customers come to your site. To do this you will need to understand what customers are actually entering into the search bar. An acquisition strategy will use more narrow keywords such as ‘discounted mahogany garden bench’ or ‘gold crucifix necklaces’.

As a search engine marketing company, we know how to make a search engine optimisation campaign work to reach the goals of your business. If you wish to discuss the advantages of using an SEO campaign, then give us a call now on 0116 275 8456 to speak to one of our team members.

David Morris

Studio 2 Online – Search Engine Optimisation Midlands

Images are essential to a website, and although users will enjoy them, search engines will basically ignore them. So how can you overcome this and help make images work well for your search engine optimisation campaign? The answer is simple; ALT tags.

ALT tags are used as a textual description of an image and more importantly are readable to the search engine crawlers. So if the search engines are reading this text, it would be an ideal place to include your keywords. Remember though not to simply stuff your keywords into the tags, as this is viewed as a spamming technique.

As a leading Search Engine Optimisation agency, and the only SEMPO Platinum awarded SEO agency in the UK, we know the techniques to use, and not to use, to help your website rank well. If you wish to discuss the advantages an SEO campaign then give us a call now on 0116 275 8456 to speak to one of our team members or arrange a no obligation meeting.

David Morris

Studio 2 Online – Search Engine Optimisation Midlands

• Google prefers not to be told about websites but find them. It is better if Google finds your website through links from outside sites, instead of being submitted straight to Google.
• Google likes links on sites that it already knows about. A good technique to get listed in Google is to have a link to your site from a site that is already listed in Google, for example a press release on PRWeb.
• One page indexed on Google is a gateway for the rest of your site. Make sure that the page indexed contains links to the rest of your site so that they can be indexed to.
• A link from a high PageRank site should equal quicker ranking. Google will probably crawl your site quicker, and therefore index it quicker, if it finds a link to your site from a page that it ranks highly.

There are many different factors involved with ranking well in Google, and that’s without even mentioning its constantly changing search algorithms. If you want to make sure your site is performing as well as it should, contact our search engine optimisers to discuss the benefits a search engine optimisation campaign could have for your business.

Give us a call now on 0116 275 8456 to speak to one of our team members or arrange a no obligation meeting.

David Morris

Studio 2 Online – Search Engine Optimisation Midlands

1. Duplicate internal pages – If your site has duplicate pages, the best method is to choose one as the main copy, and then use a 301 redirect to take users to the same copy.
2. If you have the same paragraph of content located on a number of your sites pages, you can place it within an IFrame  to reduce the chances of it being viewed as duplicate conent by the search engines.
3. After you have sent out a press release, it could possibly appear on another site and be counted as duplicate content on your site. Make sure you are credited as the original author of the article to avoid this happening.

If you need help making sure your website stands out, then as a leading search engine marketing company, and the only SEMPO Platinum awarded SEO agency in the UK, we know what can work for your business. If you wish to discuss the advantages an SEO campaign could offer your business, then give us a call now on 0116 275 8456 to speak to one of our team members or arrange a no obligation meeting.

David Morris

Studio 2 Online – Search Engine Optimisation Midlands

• Pick the right website name

For example, jargons.com will not do for a company selling watches, instead jargon-watches.com is a much more suitable name. If possible include your keyphrases in the domain name.

• Pick the right keywords!

Generic keywords won’t do, statistics don’t lie! A long tailed keyword has a higher conversion rate than a broad search term. For example, hotels v luxury hotels leicester

• Structure your website well

By having a sensible website structure i.e. directory folders and sensible file names, your webpages will make more sense both to a visitor as well as the search engine robots crawling your site.

• Suitable Internal Linking

A very strong SEO strategy much overlooked! Create a rational path linking the various web pages of your website based on a logical theme. By doing this you are guiding the user to your important pages which will help increase the enquiries or sales.

• Link building

There is no easy way to do this. It’s a tedious process but eventually very rewarding in terms of SEO.

Find the right inbound links to your website from free quality web directories, or post informative content to quality blogs creating links back to your website. By gradually increasing these links from other quality sites and having your keyword in the linking text, you will be building the authority of the website for your chosen keywords, hence ranking higher with the search engines.

• Monitor rankings and website activities

Finally, keep a close eye on the progress of your keyword rankings and use online tools like google analytics or smarterstats to monitor your website activity. This will help you gain an insight into the most popular webpages of your website, paths taken by the visitor, statistics on the number of visitors, working keyphrases and much much more!

This is just a brief outline of some SEO techniques to keep in mind while optimising for the search engines. For more information on how we can improve your search engine rankings why not call us on 0116 2758456 to see how we can help you website gain visbility and increase your sales revenue!

Mariam Shariff

Search Engine Optimisation team
Studio 2 Online – Search engine optimisation Midlands

If you want to avoid your site being viewed as spam and causing your web rankings to be adversely affected, or your site even completely removed from search results, then here are three simple guidelines to follow:

• If you are unsure if what you are doing is right or wrong, then don’t do it, as chances are it is wrong. If you are worrying about placing keyword text behind images, then don’t do it.
• Don’t make your site out to be something its not. In other words if your site sells garden furniture, do not pretend that you offer the latest celebrity gossip to rank highly in the search engines.
• If you are told that a certain practice is acceptable, but have not heard it anywhere else, then do not trust it. There are many types of bad SEO techniques, or ‘black-hat’ techniques, which some people view as acceptable even though doing them will affect your rankings for the wrong reasons.

Studio 2 Online are based in the Midlands and offer Search Engine Optimisation services which will get rid of any worry you might have in terms of SEO practice. We offer a variety of packages to suit your needs, so contact us today to see what we can do for you.

David Morris

Studio 2 Online – Search Engine Optimisation Midlands

Often website owners don’t realise just how significant SEO is to the success of their website and their business. Too often they concentrate more on the design and layout of their new website. While it is important to plan the layout of the website and have an appealing design to go with it, it is more essential to plan an effective SEO strategy. After all, you can have best designed website on the Internet, but if people can’t find it it’s not going to contribute to building your business in terms of more enquiries and sales.

Below are a few tips to help you plan the search engine optimization of your brand new website or adapt this to an existing website:

• Pick the right technology i.e. the right web developing program to build your website. It’s best if the web developer is well informed about the advantages and disadvantages of using certain technologies while building a website. For example, too much javascript or flash can be a disadvantage because it hinders search engines from crawling the website effectively.
• Understand your business target audience and come up with the right keywords that people use when they are looking for your products or services. For this there are various tools available in the market. Wordtracker or Google Adwords keyword research tool are two examples of effective tools that provide useful statistics like search popularity of keyphrases as well as suggestions for long tailed search terms which have a much higher conversion rate into a sale or enquiry.
• Provide content that is relevant to the keywords chosen in the previous step. Categorise webpages to link to these keyphrases and stay focused on the web page content to increase relevance for your keyphrases.
• Finally, when the website has gone live start building links using strategies that give search engines the impression that you are building links gradually from authoritative websites that are relevant to your business.

To find out more on how search engine optimisation can benefit your website and build your business with increased enquiries or sales, give us a ring on 0116 2938090 and see how we can help you.

Mariam Shariff

Search Engine Optimisation team
Studio 2 Online – SEO Midlands and Leicester

1. Using keywords unrelated to your site.

You may think that having the words ‘John and Edward’ and ‘X Factor’ on your homepage will currently improve your search engine rankings and therefore bring in more visitors, but if the content of your site is not actually related to these words, then the search engines will know and your rankings will suffer.

1. Hiding text within your content

One technique to sneakily add more keywords and phrases to your webpage is to make the colour of the font the same colour as the background of the website. The idea behind this is that the search engines would still crawl the text even though its invisible to users. The clever search engines are aware of this technique though and will punish your site’s rankings.

1. Doorway pages

Have the ever visited a site where the homepage contains very little text and only contains a link? This technique means that the first page is heavily optimised for the search engine crawlers, but offers no content for actual visitors. Search engines do not like sites that are not built for visitors, so trying to use this technique will again have a negative effect on your rankings.

There are many more Search Engine Optimisation mistakes that are often made, so if you don’t want to get in the bad books of the search engines, contact us to see how we can help you and your business climb up the search rankings ladder.

David Morris

Studio 2 Online – Search Engine Optimisation Midlands

So as a leading web design agency, Leicester we are well aware of the importance of having your website listed highly in the Google rankings.

Achieving a listing on the first page of Google can be a challenge, especially for competitive keywords. Getting to the top involves important decisions at the initial website design stages, as well as a well planned search engine optimisation strategy.

The benefits of ranking well in Google are:

• Google controls a large percentage of the search engine market
• Google will send more traffic to your site than the other search engines, which means more customers and therefore more profit.
• A site performing well on Google will also generally do well on the other search engines.

Studio 2 Online offer both web design and search engine solutions for our clients. This may seem an obvious thing to say, but we get a lot of enquiries from people about optimising their website, where it’s obvious that the previous designer had little or no understanding of how to build a website that’s search engine friendly and ready for a SEO campaign.

So why not ‘kill two birds with one stone’ and let us design and build your website to a high search engine friendly specification and then run a successful SEO campaign for you? That way you can have the first page of Google as a goal right from the start.

Oh, and don’t forget the value of Google Adwords as a complimentary search engine marketing tool to boost your enquiries and sales even further. Needless to say, we can help you out with this as well!

To help your website on its way to the first page of Google, or to discuss any of the web design and search engine optimisation (SEO) services we offer, contact the Studio 2 Online team. Give us a call now on 0116 275 8456 to speak to one of our team members or arrange a no obligation meeting.

David Morris

Studio 2 Online – Web design Midlands

If so then that website was lacking a very important aspect of good web design – a site map.

A site map is as useful to a website user as a road map is to a driver, and here are 5 useful tips:

• Your site map should include a link to every page within your website; from the homepage, to your contact details, to your deepest subpages.
• A link to your site map should be included on every page of your website. This means that every page within your site is only ever two clicks away, which is not only good web design, but also useful for getting your pages indexed by the search engines.
• Keep your site map under 100 links, and if more are needed then split into multiple site maps.
• An XML site map is important for search engine optimisation as it allows search engine crawlers easy access to index every page within your site.
• It’s important to understand the difference between a HTML sitemap and a XML sitemap. A HTML sitemap is useful to the visitors to your site, while a XML sitemap is designed to give information about your site directly to search engines.

If you’re lost and in need of some direction with anything to do with your website, or if you are after a brand new site, as a leading web design agency, Leicester we can provide excellent web designs and search engine friendly services to promote your business and increase your enquiries and sales.

Give us a call now on 0116 275 8456 to speak to one of our team members or arrange a no obligation meeting. If you need a map to find us, then there is one on the website…we wouldn’t want you getting lost after all!

David Morris

Studio 2 Online – Web design Midlands