We get a lot of enquiries here at Tone from confused individuals asking questions regarding social media. The main being: “Which social networks should I join and which would be the best for my business?” The answer is; it simply depends!

Because there are so many social media networks nowadays, all with their own personal benefits, it’s easy to see why many business owners simply throw in the towel before even starting their social campaigns.

I wrote a post not too long ago explaining the individual benefits of each social media network in great detail so it may be beneficial to have a read of that post for more information. But in this post, I’m simply looking to better guide certain businesses and point them in the direction of the social networks that will work for them and really focus on the target market that is right for their business.

It’s no good engaging constantly to an audience that isn’t interested in what you’re saying; it would just be a waste of time doing so. You need to find the right audience and target them and hopefully this blog post should do just that.

Find your sector in the list below:

As you can see, I’ve dissected the working environment and grouped businesses together by sector rather than focussing on every individual niche. It would have taken too long to research had I done that so I’ve narrowed the field down by using sectors.

You should be able to find your sector using the main headers, but for those who think the headers are a little vague, the examples underneath the headers should give you a better understanding of what types of business fall under each sector.

Hopefully I’ve covered everything within these areas but if I haven’t be sure to leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list.

note: It is quite difficult to get each sector perfectly right as the sectors are so broad and hold numerous different types of business e.g. the ‘Media’ sector shows that businesses should be using the social network SoundCloud. Obviously this is only relevant for the music producing and distributing businesses in the sector but I thought I’d include it in rather than leaving it out.

So, this is basically a rough guide to give you a better understanding of the social networks that could benefit you as a SECTOR, but it is up to you to look into each social network and use your common sense to see which of these would be beneficial for your BUSINESS.

So, without further ado; here are the sectors in no particular order:

Financial enterprises are arguably among the more professional of all sectors and it needs to show in their social networking. News feeds such as Digg, Reddit and NewsVine are where you should be aiming your content as well as the news-breaking giant Twitter and the king of social Facebook. Professional networks such as LinkedIn should be seriously considered if you would like to engage with likeminded businesses and form industry partnerships that could benefit your business and community. Google+ is also recommended as this is looking like turning into a real impact maker in the professional world.

Services such as marketing, entertainment and shopping are predominantly image/video/branding led. So you want social networks that can effectively display these types of imagery and branding. Image led networks such as Flickr, YouTube and Pinterest are among the best in the business for this type of social interaction. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ should be a given as these are where you will reach out and communicate with followers and fans. Also, sharing platforms such as Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon should be considered to further the reach of your content.

Utility companies such as gas boards, electrical suppliers and water distributors alongside public services such as the police force and fire service are among the types of business that need to focus their content production and delivery in a professional, newsworthy manner. They need to be easily found online and contacted so should definitely have a social profile on the main three networks Facebook, Twitter and Google+. They need to be found by professional people who are interested in their services by appearing on the professional network LinkedIn and they should be constantly engaging by pushing out content to news feeds such as NewsVine, Reddit and Digg.

Conglomerates are multi-industry companies who specialise in two or more completely different sectors. They need to be diverse in their approach as to meet the needs from each sector they are entwined with. This often means they need to have many voices saying different things in different places. They need to appear professional by engaging on LinkedIn and Google+, they need to be seen as friendly and helpful by appearing on Facebook and Twitter, they need to regularly push out content via Reddit, Digg and NewsVine and need to be producing viral content that is likely to be shared on places such as YouTube and StumbleUpon.

Companies that produce basic but essential materials such as oils, coal, gas, minerals and precious metals are the types of business that get some of the least exposure of all sectors. This is mainly down to owners not knowing where to place themselves within the social spectrum. I would advise that they interacted with others about their everyday activities on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Also, it would be beneficial for them to register with the professional networks LinkedIn and Google+ to form industry partnerships and they should be relaying information to interested parties via the news platforms NewsVine, Reddit and Digg to keep the intrigued minds aware of what goes on in these interesting enterprises.

Consumer products such as foods, clothing, tobacco and toiletries need to maintain a professional yet friendly brand image and would be best suited to the networks Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ for this type of interaction. Also, they need to regularly publish industry updates and new found information via news networks such as Reddit, Digg and NewsVine in order to keep the public up to date with industry happenings. A good way to increase exposure in this business is to create good, engaging content in the form of infographics and imagery led pieces and these would be best distributed on social platforms such as Flickr and StumbleUpon.

Healthcare professionals have arguably the biggest responsibility in terms of passing down information to the public. The public need to be aware of everything new and innovative within the industry and the best way to interact with the masses is via the most popular social networks on the planet i.e. Facebook, Twitter and Google+. They should have a profile on LinkedIn to engage with other professionals in the field and should lead their content distribution in news type communities with engaging audiences who are likely to read. The best of these communities can be found within social networks such as Digg, Reddit and NewsVine.

Media is probably the broadest sector of them all and it shows with the amounts of followers and fans these types of business receive. In order to interact with the huge audience of varied people, you need to ensure your brand image is able to talk in a varied tone. They need to be able to look professional and newsworthy by using networks such as Reddit, Digg, LinkedIn, Google+ and NewsVine. They need to be able to communicate with the average person via Facebook and Twitter. They need to have platforms to distribute music and engage with fans; SoundCloud and MySpace are good for this. And they need to be able to regularly publish interesting, engaging and image/video led content via platforms such as YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest and StumbleUpon.

Industrial enterprises who handle things like heavy construction, waste management and metal fabrication are businesses that need to look professional. Professionalism is best found via LinkedIn and Google+ where businesses can interact with fellow professionals and help form partnerships and better improve the industry. They should create press releases and regular news updates and, other than their website, should be distributing these releases via news networks such as Digg, NewsVine and Reddit. Also, they need to be able to promote themselves via other social channels that are likely to engage customers due to the sheer numbers. Popular networks such as Facebook and Twitter are the best for this type of exposure.

I.T. companies, online marketers, telecommunications companies and software services are business types like ours that need to engage in the social field as well as the professional one. Content should be engaging and informative and designed to give advice and gain trust. Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn are the best for this type of interaction. A varied range of content needs to be created and distributed in order to build the following and increase the chances of selling services. Good content is regularly supported by followers on platforms such as Pinterest and YouTube and this content should also be distributed in other areas such as Reddit, Digg and NewsVine to increase the reach of the constant and to engage with a larger audience.

in conclusion…

So, I hope I’ve given you a better understanding of the types of social network that each sector should be covering in order to gain relevant followers and a focussed target market that are likely to engage and interact.

I know that a lot of businesses simply don’t have time to cover all these bases but as long as you cover most of them, then you are at least doing as much as you can to gain a trusting following who will be more inclined to buy your services.

If you find managing all these platforms difficult, there are a few managerial tools available that will take all these profiles and place them within one dashboard that makes it a lot easier to manage. TweetDeck and HootSuite are among the best of the lot.

Also, if you want to publish your content to various networks with the click of one button – as opposed to manually logging into each network and publish content within it – then there are some great platforms for doing this too: OnlyWire, Dlvr.It and Ping.FM are the best of the bunch for turning a tedious job into a piece of cake!

Let me know about anything I may have missed and I’ll gladly update the post and include your ideas into it.

After all, we’re only here for the benefit of others!

Until next time.

Adam.

When deciding to create a website for your business, the first phrase of production is the design and development. Once this stage is finalised and finished it’s time for the on-site optimisation to begin: Naturally the first thing to consider when starting your on-site optimisation is your keyword research. Following on from this, the next step is to sort out your title tags.

What is a title tag?

A title tag is a websites first chance to make a good impression. It is the first part of your site that searchers see when they query something that your website offers. They appear at the top of the browser box on your websites pages:

Even more importantly, they appear on the search engine results pages (SERP’s) when someone queries something:

So it is essential to get these right as they are the first impression your website will give to potential customers. You need to ensure that they are drawing visitors to your your site rather than your competitors’.

Title tags are one of the most influential ranking factors of on-site optimisation. Alongside your content which contains your seamless keywords, they hold the biggest optimisation clout of any other on-page ranking technique.

If your title tags are not as good as the others around you on the SERP’s then your potential clients will never click through to your site. It’s not uncommon to see some websites ranking at number 1 that receive less traffic than those ranking lower. This is purely down to ineffective title tags and a poor meta description.

What’s the best way to optimise?

Your title tags should target three things:

As well as these three principles, it is essential that the title tags are readable from a user point of view. They need to draw the readers attention and then be interesting enough for the user to decide to click on yours rather than anyone elses.

The search engine results pages are essentially like an identity parade you might see in a police station, however in this case, you actually WANT to be the one chosen in front of the others. Optimising them efficiently will improve the click-through rate as a result.

A nice mix of primary keywords, secondary keywords and company branding all mixed into one nice, flowing, easy to read title will give your website the highest chance of gaining the click through it craves from searchers typing in queries on the search engines.

In terms of length, the title tag should be no more than 70 characters long and should contain no more than 11 or 12 words. Areas should be seperated by a hyphen ( – ) or the pipe keyboard key ( | ).

An effective title tag should look like this…

If your company is already a well established brand then putting its name in the title tags should be a given; positioning it to the front would work in this case, however if your company is relatively small then we advise you put it at the end.

Small to medium sized businesses should alter their title tags to read in this way: Primary keyword at the front, followed by the message you want to portray or your secondary keyword then followed lastly by the company’s identity or branding.

…a bad title is stuffed with keywords and unreadable to the user:

The first thing that strikes me about this title tag is that it is too long; Google cuts off the text mid-sentence so it doesn’t make sense…

Also, the meta description is stuffed with keywords and it doesn’t read well to the user so this is how NOT to do your title tag optimisation.

With Google bringing in the new ‘over optimisation’ penalty, structuring your title tags and meta descriptions in this way is sure to be frowned upon by the search engine giant as they’ll see your actions as trying to manipulate the search engine results. The search engines no longer take kindly to this and are penalising websites for using over optimisation techniques such as keyword stuffing.

Google’s main focus at the moment seems to be on usability and by ensuring your title tags and descriptions read well to the end user, you are letting Google and the other search engines see that what you offer really is helpful to searches and they will boost your rankings as a result.

How do I optimise my title tags?

Optimising title tags is one of the easiest yet most effective aspects of SEO. For the ratio of time taken to optimise in comparison to it’s ranking influence, optimising title tags is the most powerful form of SEO out there.

At Tone we work exclusively with WordPress, so optimising title tags for us is as easy as it comes. There are lots of WordPress plugins available to assist in the optimisation of title tags and meta data however our plugin of choice is the WordPress SEO by Yoast:

As you can see in the image, creating an effective title tag via the WordPress plugin by Yoast is as easy an SEO task as you’re likely to come across. However, how do you optimise if your website doesn’t use the WordPress CMS? Well, don’t worry, the job of creating a title tag is just as simple. All you need to do is write a few lines of code and the job is done:

So as you can see, optimising title tags is an easy SEO tweak that can produce quick results, effective results and lasting results. They can funnel the search engine visitors to your site as opposed to your competitors’ and if your title tags reflect the content on the page then the traffic visiting your site will be more inclined to make a purchase or fill out an enquiry form or whatever it is that you’re wanting your website to achieve.

If you implement these tips into your titles then you should see an improvement in traffic and visitor numbers almost immediately; then it’s simply up to you to get the content right on the page and convert those visitors into paying customers.

Let me know in the comments if you found this post helpful. After all, being helpful is my job!

When deciding to expose your business within the online world, it is essential that the first steps you take are following a path which is on due course for success. Too many fledgling businesses try to hit the ground running but unfortunately head down the wrong route, often leaving them well wide of the mark in their quest to dominate the top spots of the search engine results pages (SERP’s).

There are numerous reasons why these companies land themselves in hot water. The main reasons that our clients tell us of is because either they have incorrect tools to track their website; they choose to do everything in-house and end up spending time doing the wrong things due to inexperience; or because they have ‘in the middle’ syndrome!

‘In the middle’ syndrome is a common known disease to marketers and SEO’s. Its origin is the result of incorrect/inaccurate advice offered by inexperienced content writers giving ‘advice’ on how to effectively optimise websites for the search engines. As a result of this phenomenon, business owners are left with a mixed bag of knowledge and often end up making elementary errors – like altering title tags and meddling with the custom style sheet (CSS). They are talked into paying companies for mass amounts of links to give an ‘instant’ result without hardly any work.

They end up so brainwashed by these black hat tacticians that they hand over their hard-earned money in return for short-term success. This type of story is all too common, but in the long-term is only going to de-value your company’s website. You need to remember that the search engines, Google especially, has the power to strip the website (and business) of it’s reputation over night.

Algorithm updates are changes made by the search engines and are designed to scrape irrelevant sites from the top of the SERP’s. Thus helping to promote the sites which offer exceptional products and provide the best experience for the end user. The algorithms are so sophisticated these days that the only way to reach the top and stay there is to gain natural links through hard work and dedication. If done correctly, the result should be a well designed website with nice usability. The website should regularly push out relevant content for its visitors and will have a diverse link profile. If all this happens, it will naturally gain recognition from influential sources within the industry – a major ranking factor to ensure successful longevity.

There are a few basics to bear in mind when entering the digital world with your business model. They are explained in this cycle:

As you can see in the diagram, there is no mention of paid links and/or multiple poor quality directory submissions and other black hat tactics. This cycle is designed to give new website owners the opportunity to reach the top of the SERP’s in the short-term AS WELL as the long-term. It is the start of the natural SEO process which sees unproven digital companies gain a stronghold within their sector and establish themselves as a reputable source.

The Cycle Broken Down…

Keyword Targeting

There are three factors to consider before choosing which keywords to target: search volume, keyword relevance and keyword difficulty. A nice balance of these will produce targeted keywords that are relevant to your target market, are pulling in a good amount of search traffic and are not too difficult to rank for ensuring that you do indeed have a chance to rank number 1 if you put enough effort into your SEO campaign.

Google’s keyword tool and SEOMoz’s keyword difficulty tool are the best tools in the business for effective keyword research.

The trick to consider when researching keywords is to use Google AdWord’s suggestions to really dig deep and find some hidden gems that are pulling in lots of search. Create a list of good keywords that you consider your target market to be querying, then paste them into the SEOMoz keyword difficulty tool. With this information, you can then decide which keywords you want to target.

Tip: New sites will find it difficult to rank for keywords with high difficulty, so it is advised to target less difficult keywords for the best chance of success. Find out what competitors are targeting and look for signs of weakness throughout their campaign. Target more long-tail phrases to begin with and then once the business is stronger throughout the internet it can target some more competitive phrases in order to improve the search volume.

However if you did want to impact on these high volume/high difficulty phrases immediately, it would be best to run a test PPC campaign first to see the click-through rate and conversions before spending vast amounts of time and resource targeting these.

Design and Development

A lot of emphasis is being aimed towards the user experience and usability of websites as a major ranking factor these days, so before embarking on the digital route, it is essential you really focus on this area to get this stage right! Once you have your keywords targeted and your site structure in position, it is time to work out how your site is going to look and feel for the end user.

A good, accessible website should be free of errors and should contain good, relevant, unique content. The content should be meaty; not thin, to ensure that the search engines and visitors alike can get a real grasp of what the content is about.

Content needs to be engaging and answer the query of the visitor; otherwise they will leave the site. The search engines recognise this user behaviour and will deem your site as irrelevant for the search query if it continues to happen. They will then proceed to diminish its rankings for being of little value to the searchers.

In order to get the best out of your website, it is advised that you hire a professional agency who can specialise in user-centric web design and usability for the end user. In doing so, the company’s branding is kept consistent so that efforts can be spent making a loud and vocal industry voice which is more likely to gain exposure.

A good design shouldn’t just look aesthetically pleasing; it should make the information flow and should make it easy for the user to navigate through the site. Think of it from a user’s point of view: if you was clicking through a website that wasn’t taking you to where you wanted to go or was taking you round in circles then you would quickly become frustrated and would leave in a hurry – never to return. This would be the worst case scenario if people did this on your site so it’s essential to get it right. On the flip side however, your returning visitor rate would increase if they enjoyed the experience of visiting your website last time they visited.

There are some good tools on the web that can test your website and its landing pages however the best ones on the market are the Five Second Test tool and the Feedback Army service.

Also, a well structured site map will make it easier for the search engine spiders to crawl your pages and if it’s easier for the search engine robots, then it’s bound to be easier for the human visitors.

Social Media Integration

Social signals are one of the most important ranking factors for websites at this moment in time. Search and social have a relationship that is so strong at the moment that marketers and SEO’s are really placing a lot of emphasis on having a buzzing social sphere with lots of user interaction.

As mentioned earlier, your website should have your company’s branding entwined within it. The same goes when you build your social media profiles. Ensure a consistent brand image throughout your digital networks and it will make it easier for your followers to find you. For larger businesses it is not uncommon for fake or parody social media accounts to be set up to mimic the originals. By using your company’s professional branding, you are helping to guide the visitors to your own company’s profile rather than the fake ones.

Google have seen how much of an impact social media is having on the modern web so have created their own version in Google+. They have combined search and social and added +1 buttons to content and have began ranking posts shared on Google+ before the natural search results.

Bing do something similar with Facebook posts so it’s highly evident that being strong in the strong social spectrum and linking back to your website (where the calls to action are) is key to having a successful site.

Commenting and mentioning other people’s work on social media makes it easier to network with these individuals.By sharing their valuable information you begin to make a name for yourself within their circles. Publish your own great content and these influencers will be more inclined to share it with their own followers. It’s all about exposure in the world of social media and if you can gain lots of exposure in the social world then you are only going to get increased amounts of traffic visiting your website from your social profiles.

Once you have a good following behind you on the social platforms, you can then start to monitor and track them to see exactly how well they are performing. This will allow you to find where your customers are and really focus your attentions in that direction in order to turn registered users into paying customers. There are loads of great social media tools available that track your profiles, however my suggestions are Sprout Social and Follower Wonk.

Content Creation

The old adage that never seems to die is ‘content is king’. I agree that this is true, however there is a real skill involved with creating content that visitors will find informative, answers their question and will keep them on the site for more sustained periods.

New businesses and websites need to spend the extra time and create something remarkable. Answer the searchers’ queries in detail and leave them satisfied with your contribution. They will be more inclined to have a look at your service pages if they were satisfied with your content.

Researching blog content thoroughly and using graphics and videos etc. to help get the message across quickly and easily will ensure your visitors leave your site satisfied. It breaks up the text and offers readers the option to look at pictures rather than reading through all the text: it is well publicised that most blog readers/visitors only skim over the content unless it is visibly appealing. They like to get the gist of the content and then move onto the next post without spending too much time trawling through reams of text.

As shown in the diagram on the left, new websites should be focussing their content efforts on these 5 areas to start with. The darker the box, the more important the subject is for the newly starting out website.

These box colours will change over time as the order of importance shifts with growth creating new boxes that will need to be added to the circle, however, it is advised that new start-ups focus mainly on their on-site content followed by their guest posting.

When creating on-site and off-site articles, it is helpful to bear in mind that large blocks of text naturally see a higher bounce/exit rate – a ranking factor that can devalue pages and websites. Visually appealing posts are often great when guest blogging as the audience you are reaching out to will appreciate the effort and may head to your site if you offered a valuable piece of content on another website.

Link Building (Long-Term)

As mentioned earlier, the search engines now have such advanced algorithms that the emphasis has changed from promoting sites to penalising the irrelevant ones. Their theory is, that by removing the rubbish from the top of the SERP’s, the good will shine through from the wreckage. It’s a good, well thought out plan and is one to be admired – or feared if the website has been unethical in building its link profile.

Good, solid links consist of:

• On-site content
• Guest posts
• Customer testimonials

• Industry specific lists
• Social media mentions
• Relevant blog reading and commenting

• Press releases and the media
• Product review websites
• App account links

These are great ways to get strong, natural links, however do take time and patience to gather. Lots of time and resource needs to be spent in order to make a real impact in any competitive field. Success can not be achieved over night unfortunately. If it could, we would all be rich.

Bad, weak links consist of:

• Reciprocal link pages
• Random link directories

• Link farms
• Article spinning
• Open forums

• Paid link services
• Random blog reading and commenting

These types of service are often advertised as a quick and easy, paid for service that guarantees rankings. It’s not that simple: these types of link will de-value your company in the long-term and your site – including everything that’s been built around it – will be stripped by the search engines without a second thought.

Conclusion

So, to avoid being penalised in the long-term, it is advised that new websites set off in the right direction when beginning their SEO journey to the top of the SERP’s. Do not be tempted early on by the ‘instant’ overnight success that some companies offer. Reaching the top of the search engines in any sector takes hard work, dedication and lots of patience. It requires constant testing and monitoring to improve and optimise areas of your campaign that may be falling behind your competitors’ efforts.

However, keep all this information in mind and your new website and business should be on its way to success and remember, if something seems too good to be true then it often is!

Natural SEO is the way forward for the remainder of 2012 and for the foreseeable future.

I hope this post has helped. Leave a comment in the area below and let me know your thoughts!

As 70-80% (the true number is debatable) of SEO work takes place off-page, it’s vital to gain links from numerous sources and create a diverse range of links that can combine to produce a solid link diversity which will assist in the natural search rankings for your site.

If you have a great product or service, the search engines will recognise this in the long-term and rank your site highly as a result. But what happens if you have a product that is great however you’re struggling to make an impact in the short-term?

The key is to gain relevant and reputable links back to your site. In the eyes of the search engines, these will count as a vote of confidence from a third party, which will increase your credibility and aid your search rankings.

Here we have created a list of the 7 most commonly used methods of link building and will compare each one to the next in terms of scalability and potential link quality.

Link Diversity Pyramid:

As shown in the link building diversity pyramid, in order to benefit from increases in search engine rankings, your site needs a diverse range of back links. The links towards the top of the pyramid are the hardest to get hold of. They are almost impossible to fake and as a result, the search engines see these types of link as the most influential type regarding rank hierarchy.

Link Building Techniques:

All these types of links can be gained by using the following methods. We advise you spend most of your time aiming for the ones with the highest link quality, however it would be beneficial to spend time getting not so quality links just to keep the links diverse enough and balanced.

#1 – Manual link outreach (guest posting etc.)

A benefit and a drawback:

• When done correctly, the link quality can be great

• Outreaching and writing posts can be a lengthy process

Manual link submission is the process of taking the time to manually find relevant websites, blogs and pages in order to request a link on their page or site. This is obtained via finding contact details for the host and using non-paid persuasion techniques.

The best way to do this is by offering to create a guest post for their site in return for a link or two within the body of the text or within the bio section about the author.

The blog host will appreciate the day off from having to create their own content and you’ll get a nice link from a reputable source that is relevant to your industry.

To show just how powerful these individual links can be, we monitored a recent guest post of our own in the graph below:

In this graph, we obtained just one singular link to one of our service pages which was struggling for credibility. We created a guest post which took around 5 hours and in return were allowed one matching anchor text link to the service page in question in the body of the text and a link to our home page within the author bio section.

As you can see, this one link to our service page increased it’s ranking by 20 places over night. This is proof enough that guest posting is a credible ranking and link building technique.

#2 – Content and Technology Licensing

A benefit and a drawback:

• The scalability of licensed content has no boundaries

• Quality can vary as the link targets can be chosen

Some companies like to licence their content or data. This means that if the content was to be replicated or used on other websites, they would need to attribute where that content came from.

When you syndicate out your websites licensed content, you build a diverse link profile with the relevant anchor text of your choice and target whichever URL you choose for the material to link back to.

An example of this is ReadWriteWeb. They are an online blog with posts so good that they choose to licence them. NYTimes.com are just one of a bunch of news media sites who publish their content. This means that ReadWriteWeb are receiving regular links from influential sources.

#3 – Embedded Content is Great for Links

A benefit and a drawback:

• If it’s good enough, the content could go viral

• Time consuming to create and a varied mixture of links

Rather than attributing licences to your content, marketers and link builders are using embedded content in order to build their link profiles.

Videos, infographics, music and widgets are just a few ways embedded content is shared throughout the web. Content creators and link builders will spend a lot of time creating content that others would love to use within their own blog posts and articles or even on their websites. The original creator then gets credited with a link to their site.

A great link building technique!

#4 – Linkbait and campaigns that go viral

A benefit and a drawback:

• Sites providing links to these types of content are usually very strong

• Linkbait takes vast amounts of time and resource to research and produce

Viral content is what every link builder longs for. This type of content needs no promotion or marketing. It naturally attracts links and mentions from other websites who would be honoured to have the content on their pages.

Content that has the appealing factor to industry influencers has the best chance of succeeding, and in doing so, you’re ensuring that the links received are relevant to the industry you are in and the search engines will recognise this and increase the value of your site accordingly.

Our sister site Brandshank recently had a blog post designed for link bait. It was very well received and increased the visits to the site by more than 4 times the average in one day.

It was created on a seperate landing page for the blog post so the views and visit data is unavailable in Google Analytics. However, here is a screenshot of the total number of visits and views to date for the piece:

The great thing about this is that the average amount of traffic to the site has increased by 90% over 3 months and the post gets regular visitors and constant engagement throughout the music industry. Music blogs and the like are all talking about it and it was created over 3 months ago! This shows that a great piece of linkbait not only gains links and strength for your website, but it increases traffic visiting it and ensures a steady stream of visitors for the future thereafter.

#5 – Reclaimed links

A benefit and a drawback:

• Worthwhile pages tend to have good quality links

• Manual process and a very laborious task

Link reclamation is the process of reclaiming old or broken links that could be deemed as valuable for your current site or any of its pages.

Websites often change with the times: the designs change and functionality alters and as a result, links are often broken from other websites linking to your pages.

Link reclamation is finding the broken or out of date content and pointing them back to the active page on your site. It is a quick and easy process that helps regain the SEO strength that these links had for your old site or content.

Open Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools are good resources for reclaiming your old or broken links.

#6 – Emulate competitors’ link sources

A benefit and a drawback:

• Stay ahead of the competition by emulating their links and adding your own

• Researching and emulating a number of competitor’s links can be a tedious job

Link builders spend a lot of time anaysing their competitors link sources. They again use link finding tools such as Open Site Explorer to do their research.

Open Site Explorer allows link builders to simply type in their competitor’s URL address and the system provides details about all the links that are heading to that website or page.

The links can be ordered by strength,then link builders look to emulate their competitor’s links: If one of their competition has managed to publish a guest post on a strong, industry related blog, they then have the details available to get in touch with the blog and ask to get their own content published there. Likewise, link builders can identify link sources from directories etc. and look to get their own site included in those lists.

Being able to match competitor’s link profiles and then, in addition, have their own original links, link builders are able to stay one step ahead of their competitors and remain there until their competition catch wind of these types of tools. They could then use them to emulate the link builders! But by then, the link builders should be streets ahead of the game and should be unable to be caught.

So it’s vital to act as soon as possible!

On a side note, Google’s latest Panda update has affected around 1.6% of search queries to date. It has incorporated link penalties. According to Rand Fishkin on Twitter, it is recommended that if you’ve been affected by this update – in order to assist in the recovery speed – you should disclose the information detailing how you acquired the links.

#7 – Paid links (not recommended)

A benefit and a drawback:

• Paid links are a quick and easy way to get lots of links

• Links are very weak and will de-value your site in the long-term

Buying links is a strategy mainly used before Google’s Panda update. It was a good way to get thousands of links pointing to your website without the hassle and for a relatively small fee considering.

However, the diversity of links received from this type of link building is so broad that the sites linking to the link builders’ sites were of no relation whatsoever to their industry. For example, an internet marketing company would have links from pet obesity websites and Russian marriage websites and the like.

The search engines, especially Google, looked to stamp out this irrelevant link building strategy as the user experience of the searchers was jeopardised. In order for the search engines to return relevant results for the user, they needed to de-value the sites with fake back links and promote the sites who were gaining relevant, industry related links from reputable sources within the market.

Paid links can often be a natural link building technique with regards to legitimate paid directory submissions i.e. Yahoo!, but are, more often than not, a technique used by black hat tacticians designed to manipulate the search rankings.

In conclusion…

Generally, if something looks too good to be true then it isn’t true. The same can be said when building links for your website. If you refer to the link diversity pyramid further up the page, then you should be able to build a very strong link profile that the search engines will value.

Building links the natural way can be time consuming and laborious at times, however if done correctly, the ROI will be worth the effort put in. Considering that rank #1 on Google earns more traffic than ranks #2,#3 and #4 combined, it’s easy to see why employing these ethical link building techniques and doing them correctly will lift your site to the top of the SERP’s and should keep you there for the long-term.

Let us know in the comments any link building techniques you feel should be included in the list and we’d be happy to explore them in more detail!

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘content is king’ and I for one like to echo the phrase as often as possible. Not mainly because I write content for a living but simply because I believe the phrase is 100% accurate and believe that content really is king in the world of the web.

So, if content is king, it would make sense to incorporate a blog into your website or create a blog separate to your website. We advise that a blog be created within your site as this is where all your products and services will be. You want to be drawing visitors to where these services are, and the way to reach out to these visitors in order to bring them back is through your content.

Active social media profiles should work in unison with an up-to-date blog. These profiles are where you’ll be spreading the word and letting your fans and followers know about your great content.

The social media benefits for small businesses are vastly extensive and should be your central hub of small comments designed to usher people to your content.

What are the benefits of having an up-to-date blog?

There are lots of benefits of blogging for business, however the three main benefits are:

• It’s used as an information desk


• Keeps us up to date with industry trends


• Seen as an industry expert source within the sector

Things such as increased traffic and sales are an added benefit of having a blog section within your site but in order to increase the traffic and sales, you need to have these three benefits in place. In order to get these, you need to be regularly creating good, engaging content and constantly reading and commenting in other areas of the industry.

Essentially, it’s all about noise… the more noise you make, the more people will hear your voice and if your voice is saying the things they want to hear then you’re on to a winner as they begin to take notice in what you’ve got to say.

What happens if I don’t have time?

If ever you’re struggling for time to create good content to publish, you should still aim to be active with your blog reading and commenting and should aim to keep your social networks buzzing as not to lose the rhythm and let your brand image go stale.

Reading and commenting on posts made by influential members within the industry will show your followers that you’re in with the main influencers and will increase the value of your brand as a result.

Offer new insights that the original author may have missed and mention them in the comments section; it will show your expertise within the field and will gain you extra traffic if you leave a link to your site.

Without causing offence to the author, it can be beneficial to disagree with their viewpoint in the comment sections – only if you truly disagree of course – as this will spark them into conversation with you and maybe even gain their respect as they admire your courage to question an industry expert.

By sparking these types of debate, you are proving that you yourself are an influential source within the subject area and the original experts may follow you as a result. You need these influential people on your side in order to establish your brand as a leading player. As a general rule, it seems that influential people are friends with fellow influential people. They don’t like to de-value their image by being seen to promote inaccurate or unworthy sources.

How do I keep my voice levels up and become an industry expert?

Social networking is the best way to keep the noise levels rising. Twitter especially is the quickest, easiest and most effective way to spread the industry news and information you may have. News tends to break on Twitter so it would be a huge benefit if you was the one who Tweeted the news first.

By ensuring your Twitter profile is always active you are emphasising the claim that you are one of the industry’s leading voices. By offering interesting information, your community is only going to grow whilst at the same time focussing the following into one fine-tuned community who are all interested in the same things (otherwise known as a target market). A following of potential clients and customers is the best following imaginable. Once you have this following you need to gain their trust.

There is a great piece of software called Timely which automatically assesses your last 199 Tweets and studies what topics you are Tweeting about.

After your initial 199 Tweets, it can then recognise keywords in any following Tweets and uses the information gathered from it’s assessed Tweets to gauge the best time to Tweet about a particular subject based on the interactions of your previous comments. This ensures that if you are Tweeting about a certain subject that it is published at the ideal time for the audience you are trying to aim it at.

How often should I Tweet?

We get a lot of people asking us this question and the answer is ‘it depends’. It depends on the industry you’re in and depends what you’re Tweeting about. It depends what you’re aiming to achieve with your Tweets and depends on your audience and how influential you are.

It’s not uncommon to see people who Tweet 20+ times per day however if I was to put a number on it (and this is my own opinion and nobody else’s), I would say that you should be Tweeting between 5 and 10 times per day. I look to Tweet 8 or 9 times if you wanted a more specific number.

Now, I’m not saying that this is the correct number of Tweets to be pushing per day and I’m sure expert Tweeters will beg to differ, but I’ve found that this works best for the industry I’m in and the followers I’m looking for that want to be within my audience.

Luckily for me, Timely only lets you publish a maximum of 9 Tweets per day so I’ll never be bombarding my followers with unnecessary jargon and it can always be controlled and distributed at times when it is likely to get the most clicks and re-Tweets etc.

It does schedule Tweets outside your normal working hours but do not be alarmed; it knows what it’s doing and will publish certain things at strange times to you – so it seems – but it is really trying to aim the Tweets at the more influential members of your audience who don’t necessarily live in the same timezones as you do.

The internet never sleeps and works super-effectively in every timezone. For us, this is a good benefit of Timely because we have clients all over the world and we offer services that aren’t limited to any geological area so can benefit from the wide outreach that Timely offers regarding audience.

An added bonus of regular Tweets about engaging content is that whenever you come to publish your own content, your audience will subconsciously see your own posts in the same light as the expert content made by other influencers and will be more inclined to give it a look.

It’s up to you to keep the content as good as your fellow peer’s, but the eyes that view it will look at it with more of an open mind if you’re regularly pushing out links and comments to great, relevant content.

So how do I do it?

There’s a few steps you need to take in order to maximise your influence and build a great community of followers who are all sounding the same horn as yours.

Follow these four steps and you’ll be well on your way to stamping your brand upon the mind of the consumer whilst at the same time increasing your popularity within the industry and increasing your sales as a result:

Step 1 – Share FREE knowledge!

• People will see that you know what you’re talking about


• The more you talk about and share, the more the public will trust


• The more people trust, the likelier they are to hire your services

Many companies frown upon giving away ‘free information’, as they argue that it’s essentially telling people – for free – how to do the job that your company is usually charging a fee for. Essentially you are, but by giving away this free information you are building trust within the industry which is a HUGE selling point for any business.

The clients love this kind of approach as you’re basically telling them what work you are going to do for them should they hire your services so they know exactly what they are going to get if they become your client.

Customers who are not too savvy with your industry (your ideal target market) will see how complex the work you do actually is and will take your expert advice and pay for your services rather than going it alone because you have already established yourself as an industry expert through your content.

Your new clientèle will recognise, from the content, some of the terminology you are using when communicating with them. This will keep them satisfied as they can physically see where you are up to and where you should be heading next.

Your content should basically be lots of chapters explaining different subject areas of your industry and once combined, you should be able to compile it together and publish a book or give it away as a free eBook to your loyal followers.

Step 2 – Answer industry related questions!

• Proves to the public that you are indeed an expert


• Keeps you up to date within the industry


• Ensures your brand image never goes stale

There are a lot of question and answer websites on the net but we’ve found that the best one for business and internet related issues is Quora.

This great resource is an area where the public can post their industry related questions and problems and experts in the field will offer their opinions on the answers and solutions. Offering free advice will ensure that you remain an influencial industry source and gain added trust along the way.

An added bonus of this type of exposure is that you get to see – real time – what problems are arising within your industry. You can see what problems the public seem to be having and direct your sales pitches towards answering these common problems.

It’s also a great way of researching and generating blog content as every question asked by the public is a blog post title within itself.

Not to mention, whenever you publish an answer on sites such as Quora, you leave your tagline which will incorporate a link back to your website. So, whenever another person comes across the problem later on in time, the answer will always be there. Others will reap the benefits from this and the link will always be there to point them to the experts who supplied the answer to their problem… you!

Step 3 – Be knowledgeable in other industries!

• Some industries can impact on others


• Keeps you one step ahead of the game


• Can lead to partnerships with other sectors

Being knowledgeable in other industries will stand you head and shoulders above your competitors. Changes in industry trends can often impact other industries so it’s always useful to keep your ear close to the ground regarding anything that could link to your own industry. Recognising trends that could impact your own sector will promote you as an industry expert in your own right.

Noticing these trends will allow you to be the first to publish news. As mentioned earlier, Twitter would be the best place to show off this knowledge.

I’ll give you an example to better illustrate my point:

As shown in the image, the original trend of road freight tax rises can have an impact on other industries – in this case the environment and national unemployment.

Being able to identify trends and changes within industries and linking them to your own industry will not only give you lots of ammo for blog topic content but will ensure it’s you who spreads the word first.

Being the first in the world of news can often be the difference between success and failure.

Step 4 – Link to sources in your content!

• Shows that your content is of the same viewpoint as the known experts


• Brings the influential sources to your own site and its content


• They may be the missing piece of the puzzle to make your content go viral

Linking out to relevant sources within your content will ensure your posts avoid being de-valued for plagiarism. In order to stem the disease often referred to as ‘writers block’, we’ve all resorted to taking influence from others’ ideas. You need to ensure you credit the original idea creator within the body of the text.

Firstly, it shows that your content is of the same opinion as the expert source and if the source you link to is reputable enough, it will automatically bump up the value of your own viewpoint as your post is essentially echoing what the original author is talking about.

Giving the authors credit for their work will also bring them to your own content as they often receive a pingback when somebody mentions them or their posts. They may leave a comment on your own post: What an honour!

These influencers may feel the need to share your content if you offer insights which they may have missed. Influential bloggers who share your content have the power to make it go viral – if the content is good enough of course. Viral content means maximum exposure for your company and maximum exposure should result in increased sales.

Once a respectable source catches wind of your expertise within the sector, they may even return the favour in their own blog posts and link out to your content. This could lead to greater connections, elite partnerships and could result in more work being passed in your direction.

So, in order to become a leading player within the industry you’re involved with, you need to be sounding your voice as loud and as often as is necessary without being the voice that people would love to shut up!

It’s all down to good, engaging content – because after all, content is well and truly king!

What else should small business owners be doing to become THE influential source within their industry?

It’s definitely no secret and is often well publicised that ALL of us have struggled keeping visitors on our sites for sustained periods of time. It’s also no secret that some of us have written fantastic blog posts that seem to have fallen on deaf ears. This post explains how to address two of online marketing’s most common problems and offers advice on how to increase time on site whilst you also revive your old posts from the brink of extinction.

Our friend James Agate from Sky Rocket SEO recently published a fantastic case study on himself explaining how one of his articles seemingly failed whilst another succeeded. He went into great detail and offered some valuable techniques to give an insight into how the rest of us can ensure our posts are well received as opposed to dismissed in the near future.

The failed post which James refers to was actually a fantastic idea and had the potential to be the first of many great articles in and around the same subject. The post was in fact well received however the true aim of it’s purpose was never likely to come to fruition and was therefore announced as a failure before any more time and effort was spent chasing a lost cause.

What happens though if you publish a great piece of content that fails to get the exposure you anticipated when you’re sure that – should the relevant eyes see it – it can go on to be a great success? Do you scratch it off and forget about it; marking it as a failure and rue the opportunity missed? Or do you bring it back to life whilst at the same time increasing the time that visitors are spending on your site; increasing conversion rates as a result?

I know which one I’d rather choose! Remember that if you’re marketing is being done correctly, your fans and followers will have increased giving you more eyes on your newly revived post than there were when you initially published it.

Why most posts fail…

A lot of posts fail because the author approaches them in the wrong way. They struggle to correctly understand the benefits of blogging for business. They are so desperate for their post to begin gaining revenue that they forget about the readers who are going to be reading them. Avoid loading your pages with things like advertisements, these impact the experience of the user and more often than not will result in them leaving your site due to the spammy bombardment of third-party advertising campaigns. Advertising aside, keep the information relevant to your target audience. In an attempt to prove they are on the right lines, bloggers often link to too many – and mostly irrelevant – places; again resulting in a bad experience for the user. Let your blog posts flow; they need to be elegant and clean. Break the writing up with nice pictures that compliment to aesthetic look and feel of the site/blog hosting it. You’ll find that the time on the page will increase as a result as opposed to an increase in bounce rate and/or exit rate.

Good research is the key to posting blog content that works. Research from reputable sources in the industry is crucial as this will make it easier for the search engines to understand what subject your post is describing. I’ll talk about the benefits of linking to other sites further down the page, but for now all you need to know is that it helps the search engines and Google especially will appreciate your help and will reward posts for their information and usability; the two things you claim by linking to reputable sites.

Arguably the most common reason why blog posts and blogs in general fail is because of a lack of patience, focus and determination. These three ingredients can turn an ordinary post into a viral post and can turn a blog into a thriving metropolis of tourists as the nation and the world-over come and visit to catch a glimpse of your creation. Look at your content creation in the same way you would a building construction: Who’s going to want to visit a mud hut when for the same price they can visit the Hilton Hotel? There is no shortcut to blogging success. The thing that defines the good from the bad is the amount of hard work they put in. Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz wrote an epic post which must have taken an age to put together but I thought one of his images from the post would better explain my point:

This graph shows where the failing bloggers give up compared to where the dedicated bloggers end up. It just goes to show that every blog post which you create – whether it be good or bad – is a learning curve and even the best in the business will get it wrong from time to time so why shouldn’t you? Stay focussed, do great research, be creative and who knows, maybe you could be publishing your own version of this graph; showcasing your own website’s success.

How to revive your old posts…

As mentioned earlier, if your marketing is done correctly, your blog should be receiving more traffic now than it was when you originally published your great post that fell on deaf ears. Your readership will have grown and if the original readers never saw your post then the new readers surely haven’t either. Let them know about it! There are a number of ways you can bring it back from the dead. The worst thing to do would simply be to leave it sat there. It has no value if it has been archived and forgotten about. If it isn’t ranking and there’s nothing/nobody linking to it then it’s obvious that before long it will be a distant memory that only the author will remember and may never see the light of screen again. The first thing you need to do is to let people know it’s there: Maybe a sidebar section of the homepage could do the trick.

• 
  

  Tip #1 – Side bar widgets

As with side widgets showing links to ‘most popular posts’ and ‘most recent posts’, you could create one showing ‘posts from the past’. This way readers and visitors have access to much of the archives all from the comfort of the landing pages without having to delve deep into the site. The trick with the modern world is to show them things you think they are looking for before they realise they are looking for it; rather than giving them the chance to Google it hence leaving your site. Keep them trawling the pages of your site; you will be keeping them there for longer, giving them more of an insight into what your company do, subconsciously gaining their trust and increasing your chances of – if not now then maybe sometime in the future – turning that trust into sales. This improves conversion rates thus improving the efficiency of your website whilst informing Google how helpful your website/blog is to the user who will improve your rankings accordingly.

• 
  

  Tip #2 – Use tactical Tweets

A way of gaining exposure for your posts without changing the look of your pages is by effectively using social media as your business’ conversational tool to give your audience the opportunity to see the post. Twitter is great for this; create a new hashtag for your past posts and check that it isn’t being regularly used. Something like #AceFromTheArchives, #PostFromThePast or #OneFromBefore might help to get extra traffic to your posts. Make it a daily/weekly offering depending on the size of your archive. We’ve gained a lot of exposure to previous posts this way and can assure you it is definitely worth doing.

• 
  

  Tip #3 – Run competitions for exposure

This is a great way to increase traffic viewing the site. If you think the post has the potential to be excellent, offer a quick competition. Something along the lines of a free t-shirt for the first 5 comments or a free mini report of your website’s performance for the first 5 comments should be enough to get a few comments on the board. The (great) side effect of this will be the sense of achievement gained from the competition winners. They will Tweet, Facebook comment, share and boast about how they won their prize and offer the link to their friends and followers who will then visit the post and read the information contained and share it on for it’s excellence rather than the prize. Competwition is a great service that allows you to gain hoards of followers on Twitter by using a simple competition and prize. Once a great post begins to snowball, it will be shared more often and more further afield. A few t-shirts or a bit of extra work in the form of mini site evaluations could be the difference between a static post and a viral post. Is it worth the effort you think? I do.

• 
  

  Tip #4 – Link to existing posts

In the posts that you create from now and in the future, spare a thought for the older ones. Rather than going into detail about keyword research for instance every time you mention keyword research in an article, link back to your old post that explainshow to do keyword research. Like I just did there. . It will save you a lot of time in typing and will still be offering the visitor the same information they need. Another way to use links effectively in new posts is to link out to relevant posts and authoritative sites who gave you the inspiration for the post in the first place. The search engines will recognise the authoritative post and will see that whatever you are explaining has been mentioned before by a reputable source thus giving your article more relevance. Linking to these sources can often alert the original author via a ping alert. An author who has been mentioned in a third party post is more inclined to give it a quick look over and if the information contained is good enough, you may find them sharing it with their influential friends who will share with their influential friends and so on and so forth…

Here at Tone HQ, we work exclusively with WordPress because as CMS goes, WordPress rocks! The reason I mention WordPress for internal linking to older posts is because there’s a great plugin called SEO Smart Links which can automatically link your keywords and phrases to your existing content and blog posts. It’ll save you the time of going through your entire archives and doing each link manually. The good thing about this plugin is that rather than linking every time it sees the keyword – which would look horrendous if your keyword was quite generic – it will automatically only link to the keyword a certain number of times (usually just once) so will avoid link spam and will still have a nice link density.

Your blog and its posts should look like a spider’s web:

Each post should be linking out to relevant sources as well as other internal posts which you consider to be relevant sources. If you were to draw the catalogue of posts with their links on paper they should not look too dissimilar to a spider’s web. The web should be suspended mainly from two anchor points: The blog which holds all your posts and your service pages or products which you are ultimately trying to point your visitors to as these are where your call to action buttons are situated – if they’re not, then they ought to be! Inter-linking all your posts this way will have the added bonus of keeping visitors on your blog for longer and an increase in time on site – if utilised correctly – could improve your conversion rates.

• 
  

  Tip #5 – Turn time on site into conversions

In order to truly gauge whether you have a successful website, you need to make sure it’s making sufficient revenue thus converting visitors into customers. If your site’s products and services pages have poor call to action points then the readers aren’t going to be influenced into making a purchase/subscription or whatever it may be that you’re aiming to achieve from your website/blog.

You should be aiming your content toward your target market in layman’s terms and be giving them as much information as they need by walking them step by step through how you approach things as a company and how you could improve their own company should they choose to work with you and buy your services. The step by step stages should end with you showing them how to purchase/get in touch/subscribe to your services. These are your call to actions; they are the goals you are wanting your content and service pages to produce.

A good call to action button should look and feel clean but should stand out from the background of the page. Many websites have a clear call to action button incorporated with a big arrow pointing to it and further text encouraging visitors to click the button. Try some of these techniques yourself and record your findings to see what seems to be working and emphasise those whilst at the same time dismissing the techniques that don’t seem to be converting.

So it all goes to show that you’re old posts should not be consigned to the rubbish pile. Give them a new lease of life and let your newer visitors have a look. If they’re truly remarkable then they won’t be on the rubbish pile for long!

Give us your insight into your own techniques for reviving old posts from extinction. Let us know how this affected the time on site and conversion rates and/or if you gained any new subscribers etc.

For small businesses and fledgling companies, being able to get the best out of your website at the earliest possible opportunity will strongest possible position for rapid growth. You have your website built, you’ve filled it with content and optimised the pages. That means your work is done, right? Unfortunately it isn’t as easy as that otherwise we’d all be rich. Once you have your site up and running, you need monitor it to find out where you stand within your industry and make regular tweaks to iron out any flaws which are contributing to the failing of your website.

“But how do I find out whether or not my website is working and how do I make it 100% efficient?” I might hear you say. The answer is simple; use the free tools that are around you. They will show you where your site is excelling, where it is failing and will likewise do the same for your competitors. Getting an extra-detailed analysis of the market you’re working in and the big players within it will help you to devise your plan of attack once you decide to create your own foothold within it.

Here we’ve put together a list of 8 helpful tools when combined together will give you all the information you need to run an effective website for your business. The takeaway from using these tools should leave you with a pretty comprehensive plan on paper of what you need to do to begin the ascent to the top of the SERPs.

#1 Keyword Optimisation

Finding keywords to match your products is easy and there isn’t actually much thought needed to brainstorm them; if you’re experts within the industry like you claim to be then the keywords should come naturally. Likewise, finding words that are popular within the industry is easy also. The trick however is to find words that your competitors aren’t using but can still match the products you sell. Effective keyword optimisation is arguably the most important on-page optimisation technique a website can use. Google Adwords shows you the search volumes of a particular query. You can query as many keywords and phrases as you like; not only does it show you the local and global search volumes for each but it also suggests similar words and phrases that may produce larger searches that may be lesser competition.

#2 Page Rank

Page rank is a mythical number designed for ego boosting. It doesn’t have any ranking factors in the eyes of the search engines, however if you have a higher page rank, then the chances are you are doing things right in terms of SEO. Page ranks exist for every indexed page and range from 1-10 with 10 being the strongest. We suggest that if you have a page rank of at least 3 then you’re doing most of the things correctly. A page rank of 6 and above are extremely strong pages. If your website or any of it’s pages are a page rank of 6 or above then you’re obviously a force to be reckoned with within the industry and are more than likely influencing a huge proportion of the market already. A great tool to check page rank can be found at www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank. Alternatively, there are extensions available that you can add straight to your toolbar so whenever you visit a page, the page rank is shown immediately in the toolbar.

#3 Link Building

Link building is one of the most influential ranking factors in 2012 and refers to the amount and the authority strength of links pointing to your pages. A link from an authoritative website is basically an appreciation of your page from a reputable source; a thumbs-up. Google recognises the amount of acknowledgements a site is receiving from third party sites and will rank them higher if there are numerous links and those links are strong; from sites with higher page ranks. OpenSiteExplorer is a great free tool which will show you the amount of links pointing to a specific page. You can check your own pages and even your competitors to get an idea of where you are within the industry at the moment and how far away/infront you are in relation to your compatitors. It also shows you the page authority, domain authority and the linking root domains. All of which are ranking factors for search.

#4 Search Engine Saturation

Search engine saturation (SES) is the name given to the number of indexed pages you have on your site throughout the search engines i.e. Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. The more pages indexed, the more potential reach you have as each page will be targetting different keywords enabling you to potentially rank in a number of various search queries. The key to improving your search engine saturation is content. The main way in which companies create more pages is by incorporating a blog within their website. Consistently pumping out news and information will give you better SES and, at the same time, will get more eyes viewing your content. The more eyes you have looking at your blog and it’s content the more inclined visitors will be to browse your products. More browsers naturally equates to increased sales. It’s up to you to increase your saturation, however if you find yourself struggling for time, it is advised that you outsource your copywriting so your site doesn’t look ‘idle’. If you was wondering what your SES is, there’s a free tool at SEOBook that will scrape the information for you. You can also use this tool to compare your saturation with competitors’.

#5 Search Positions

Appearing higher in the search engines is a major factor which defines successful, lucrative websites from mediocre/’stale’ websites. A website which has reach to high volumes of searchers is more likely to convert those searches into sales. Searching a query on Google and then laboriously wading through each results page to find out where your page is ranked would be a thankless task with no guarantee that you will even be ranking in the top 5,000,000 reults. Fortunately in the digital era there are tools that will do the wading for you. There is a great blog post by Yoav Ezer offering free downloads of a Microsoft Excel tool designed to scrape results, visualise your search positions and monitor your rankings. Knowing where you currently rank for specific keywords will give you a better understanding of which pages you need to be optimising further with back links etc.

#6 Site Maps

Sitemaps are designed to organise your website. They offer search engine spiders – who crawl the pages – easier routes to your individual pages meaning they’re able to index them quickly and efficiently. Google are placing extra emphasis on site speeds as a ranking factor in recent times therefore will de-value a site and it’s pages if it is difficult to navigate. www.xml-sitemaps.com is a good resource to quickly create sitemaps for your site in XML and HTML format, meaning that not only do the search engine spiders get easier navigation of your site, but human visitors will also find it easier to navigate. Usability is arguably the most important ranking factor for 2012, so having an easily navigate-able site will definitely set you apart from your competitors.

#7 Meta Data

There is a lot more to on-page optimisation than simply incorporating a few relevant keywords here and there within your page. Areas of the page such as the meta tags, titles, images and meta descriptions to name a few, are all opportunities to optimise your page further. How can you tell if your page is optimised enough though? Google Rankings ultimate SEO tool is a fantastic free service which offers an SEO analysis of all your meta data, titles, images and content and gives you a comprehensive review of all your pages. It’s a great way to find the places you missed that could be better optimised for search. CMS plugins such as Yoast’s WordPress plugin are great time saving tools as well as they can check your on-page optimisation while you’re typing your content.

#8 Site Analytics

I thought I’d save the best until last in terms of analysing your website’s efficiency. In order to ensure your website is working at 100% efficiency, you need to delve deep into it’s stats and facts. Google Analytics is a free web-based tool created by Google to help websites spot where they may be going wrong and helps them improve. It tracks the traffic visiting your site and offers detailed information about these visitors. It is the most popular analytic software on the market and has the ability to visualise your websites information and have a good nosey at the numbers. You can find out things like traffic visiting the site, the time on site and time spent on pages, conversion rates, where your visitors came from and what search terms they used to get there. The advantage you have over your competition by knowing fine details like these will enable you to emphasise the areas that are working the best for you and implement them quickly whilst your competitors still use trial and error techniques.

So, in a nutshell… For any start-up company, beginner marketer or small business. The benefits you can get from utilising these free tools around you will put you ahead of the game and will have you motoring up the search rankings quickly. After all, the big players in the industry only got to where they are by using these tools so why shouldn’t you? Blow away the competition immediately around you and aim for higher ground. There’s no point in treading water or looking behind you when the only place you should be concentrating on is straight ahead!

Had enough on-page optimisation? Check out our post about more advanced off-page techniques.

Join in the conversation to add some free tools that I may have missed. The aim is to help young businesses as much as we can so the more tools at their disposal the merrier.

Right now we stand as a company of 5 employees and although as a business we’re still very much in our youth I would like to think we’re making great waves and I for one am very proud of where we stand now.

I have made every effort to build Tone as a smart agency driven by strategy, process and a love for what we do. Indeed, our official internal motto of “An open, collaborative strategy will enable us all to make better day-to-day decisions to realise our vision” is testament to that.

In saying all of this, I also understand that sometimes it takes personalities and great people to grow a company not just a set of skills. To that end we have a policy for investing in talent not just experience.

Earlier in the post I eluded to a pride I felt for the company right now, this pride was embodied by this post I saw the other week. This post covers the career switch from Tone employee Anthony Mcloughlin (@anthony_mac85), who joined the company in November. Anthony is now an integral part of our digital marketing output. The successful switch by Anthony shows that a bit of determination and enthusiasm are assets transferable to any occupation.

In addition to offering Anthony a complete switch of career we also have welcomed a school leaver as Web Designer on the Apprenticeship scheme Brandon Ingham (@brandoningham). I feel as though this diverse range of experience gives us the depth we need to really succeed. This isn’t to say we don’t know what we’re doing – we also have a backbone of ex larger agency staff giving us the rounded knowledge that is helping the company right now.

What am I getting at?

If I am being 100% honest I have penned this post with no real ‘moral of the story’ defined I just felt as though I needed to give some public praise to the new guys on the block and to give some insight as to how we do things at Tone. Furthermore, we have two openings in as a Web Designer and Web Developer so I hope this post gives you a little background as to how we do things here.

Join an ambitious team of individuals

Alas! There is a point to all of this afterall, this post is a semi-formal introduction of our new Careers page. Right now there are two positions on there, so hit the button below and see if you fit the bill to join us!

Before embarking on your SEO campaign, the first and arguably most important thing to consider is your keyword research. Taking the time to build a list of well researched and relevant keywords for the target market you’re aiming at will create a healthy ROI in terms of viewing impressions on the SERPs, traffic visiting the site, enquiry forms filled out and ultimately sales.

Failing to correctly implement keyword research, like too many small businesses do, could result in customers being unable to find your site and it’s products. You could sell the best products in the industry but if they are unable to be found then they aren’t going to sell. An epic failure in business terms if you ask me!

It will not only be economical in the near future to carry out a successful keyword research campaign but doing it as soon as possible and doing it right will bring a wide customer base and continued custom throughout your time at the top of the SERPs. The repeat custom percentage will increase and consumers will be happy with their industry leading product, therefore will continue to buy from you – and as a knock-on effect of this, Google will recognise the loyalty from customers and the increase in popularity of your products so will continue to allow you to dominate the top spots of the search engines; ensuring the cycle keeps revolving in favour of you and your business.

If you want to stay competitive and rank above your competition, you need to implement a thorough keyword campaign that will not only target the keywords with the most search volume but will also target phrases with the least competition and the ones with the highest conversion rate. All this equates to effective keywords that will target what it is your customers are really searching for.

A few do’s and don’ts…

• DO see keyword research as THE most important on-page SEO strategy on your site.


• DO take your time to ensure you get it right. You will see a rapid increase in sales when done correctly.


• DO enter the mind of the consumer. Target relevant keywords that customers will be searching for.

• DON’T assume you know what keywords you should be targeting before writing the content for your pages.


• DON’T look for volume only. Often the most searched terms are the most irrelevant to your business.


• DON’T try to get in amongst the big players of the industry immediately. Start smaller and target long-tail keywords.

#1 Brainstorm keyword categories

The thought of actually sitting down and putting together a huge list of potential keywords can be very unnerving to say the least. However, this is the most important part of keyword research. Here you simply take note of everything you think that potential customers/clientele will type into the search engines in order to bring them to a product that you’re selling. The trick here is to start with your most lucrative/important products first and do research for that particular product only. This will create relevant keywords for one product which will either have one page for the category of the keyword or have it’s own individual page in your site with it’s own relevant content containing the keyword/s which you research. Either way is well documented however we advise you create fewer pages with each ‘category’ page targeting numerous keywords. This way you will get more internal links pointing at the same page rather than the links being diluted to each individual ‘product’ page.

• BONUS TIP:

It would be beneficial here to understand all the sub-categories that come with each individual product i.e. if you was selling mattresses and beds, you would include targeted keywords which really zone-in on the product you’re trying to sell. Things like ‘memory foam double mattress’ or ‘cheap four poster wooden bed’ should be included to create a really broad yet targeted number of keywords for each specific ‘category’ page.

Try to think of and include every possible variation of the keywords and phrases to ensure you have a solid, all-round list of potential keywords for your products. The more the merrier here. It could be beneficial to ask people who aren’t familiar with your products or the industry to throw a few ideas together as these people often have the ‘average Joe’ way of thinking which could be deemed as the way of thinking for the average person – or in other words; the majority of people searching for your products.

#2 Find out the volume of searches

So you have a list of potential keywords and phrases. The next step is to put them into some sort of research tool. Keyword research tools allow you to get an instant evaluation of the keywords you’ve put together and will filter out the bad ones whilst letting you know which of the list will be the most appropriate to use in terms of search volume. There are a number of tools available to find out keyword volume:

Wordtracker is a good one for researching about certain phrases and checking their popularity amongst your competitors.

WordStream is another site which offers results in PPC marketing and SEO. It can help with keyword organisation and profitability.

Google Suggest is a tool that can find relevant synonyms and broad matches for your initial keywords. Good for finding terms you may have missed.

Microsoft’s AdCentre tool is excellent for finding out other things like the average click-through-rate over time or the average cost of a PPC campaign per click etc. It allows you to fully understand which specific keywords/phrases are going to be of best value for your business.

The tool of choice by us and the majority of the more savvy SEO campaigners is the Google AdWord’s Tool. Google AdWords is a free piece of technology designed to combine all the characteristics of the other suggested tools and bring them together into one easy interface which is simple to use and highly accurate. So when searching for the keyword volume, Google AdWords should be the tool of choice.

#3 Find out the competition

Google AdWords allows you to collect together the most suitable keywords and phrases from the list and compare them to the keywords being used by your competitors. Taking a double approach to researching keywords will essentially give you the information you need to take what your competitors are using and adapt it to bolster yourself within the ranks.

In order to find out the individual competition that each keyword possesses and to find out how difficult it will be to rank, you need to check out the SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool. The name is pretty self-explanitory; the tool shows you how difficult it is for a specific keyword to rank.

#4 How “strong” are your competitors?

Another added benefit of the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool is it’s ability to assess your competitors. It’s as simple as typing in the URL of your most relevant competitors and it gives you a hugely detailed analysis of where they’re excelling, where they’re not putting as much emphasis and everything in-between. Knowing how your competitors tick will ensure you stay in the lead and ensure they remain in your shadow.

#5 Know what makes a great keyword

The secret formula for the “perfect keyword/phrase” can be found within these 3 main principles:

High Search Volume - Well, I say high volume but what I mean is highest volume. And what I mean by that is medium-small volume. The reason I say this is because the high volume searches are the most competitive. Google AdWords is the best for this purpose. The trick is to find the highest volume of searches twinned with the lowest competition. This way you’re giving yourself a chance to rank in a competitive yet achievable market which allows access to significant amounts of traffic as a result.

Low Competition - This is where the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool is at it’s best. Finding out the keywords which have the least competition will ensure that you appear higher within the searches and will result in the majority of impressions which converts to higher click-through rates from the SERPs. A higher percentage of low volume searches is definitely better than no percentage of high volume searches.

High Conversion Rate - Google Analytics is a good piece of software which allows you to run PPC campaigns. You can test your keywords to see if the click-through rate is worth pursuing for your content. The ones that lead to conversions are the best ones and should be the phrases that you go for. PPC campaigns can give you a good idea about leads and conversions and they allow you to target multiple keyword groups and gives you the opportunity to set up goals.

• BONUS TIP:

A good way to judge what keywords or phrases are going to have a high click-through rate and ultimately conversion rate is by looking at the cost per click (CPC). As a guide, the higher the CPC, the more competitive the keyword. However for a more accurate campaign we advise you create a PPC campaign and test it yourself but this is just a quick tip that may be beneficial to businesses operating on a tighter budget.

#6 Put your research to good use

So now you have a good list of maybe 10 or 20 strong keywords that are less competitive and have a good search volume. They should be phrases that you would query if you was the customer with no knowledge of the industry and if done correctly, you should notice that you may already have some of the phrases scattered around your existing copy already as these are the terms that industry voices are echoing already.

You need to put your keywords into categories that all point towards a similar product. e.g. So ‘cheap football boots’ and ‘women’s Adidas football boots’ and ‘men’s black studded football boots’ should all be in the same category titled ‘Football Boots’. It is recommended that you relate three or four keywords to each category page for the best effects.

This should simply be a case of amending your current content by changing a few words to incorporate the new keywords you’ve researched. If you haven’t created your content yet and were simply doing research to find out the topics to write about then your topics are your keywords. Your copywriting shouldn’t be loaded with the keywords as ‘keyword stuffing’ is frowned upon and the search engines and users alike will see this as a spammy tactic and degrade your site and it’s pages accordingly. Instead you should seamlessly incorporate the words into the text to keep it readable to the human visitors who are ultimately the people you are aiming your content at first and foremost.

• BONUS TIP:

You’ll need to incorporate keywords into other areas of your site other than your copywriting to gain maximum effect. You can add keywords to your page titles, permalinks, meta titles, meta descriptions, alt text and anchor text. Front loading the keywords in the titles i.e. “KEYWORD Can Help To Change Your Life” has been proven to make a bigger impact than putting the keyword anywhere else within the title.

There’s a great post (it’s a little dated now but is still extremely useful) by SEOmoz‘s CEO and co-founder Rand Fishkin about the perfectly optimised page. In the post he explains how keyword density is so important, why keyword prominence should not be overlooked and explains everything you need to know about ways of improving your on-page optimisation. It’s well worth a read!

EXTRA BONUS TIP:

One thing to note is that algorithms, websites and customer’s needs are constantly evolving. Keep up to date with your keyword research to stay ahead of the competition and cement your place at the top of the search engines.

EXTRA EXTRA BONUS TIP:

I saved this vital piece of information for last as I feel it’s the most important! It is just a simple piece of information that you should keep in the back of your mind and should stop you from cutting corners when carrying out your keyword research. In the search results, ranking #1 gets more traffic than ranking #2, #3 and #4 combined!

Congratulations, you’re now ready to put your newly created/amended content live! Now it’s time to sit back and analyse what’s working and what’s not and act accordingly.

What has worked for you? Leave a comment below, I’d be happy to carry on the conversation.

Adam.