There are a number of things we can say here, and chances are they will be exactly the same on any search engine optimisation service website – but just so you don’t think anything is missing, lets get the obvious out of the way first:

• Experience – we have been doing SEO since 2003, on a huge variety of sites across a massive range of marketplaces.
• Knowledge – we know the difference between “good SEO” and “looks good SEO”. We also invest a huge amount of time to learning everything there is to know about new developments with all of the major search engines to ensure we always stay ahead of the latest Panda, Penguin or any other fluffy animal update.
• Reputation – ask one of our clients what they think about us. Any of them. You will get the same answer every time
• Nice people – yes, its not the best thing to say about yourself (much better coming from our clients, see previous point), but we are genuinely nice people who want to deliver the best possible service to your business.

Now, these are all very good and valid points, but none of them really make us stand out from the crowd. None of them are likely to make you choose us over anybody else. So, the question still remains – why would you choose us for your SEO? We believe the following are unique to us, and make the difference between an SEO provider that does a decent job, and one which genuinely has a positive impact on your business and you will enjoy working with for a long time to come:

• We measure our success by YOUR success. Most SEO companies will get a range of keywords for you, work on them, then come back and tell you that you are in first place. Job done. Well, we don’t think that IS job done, not by half. Our job is to deliver SALES to your business. Sure, ranking number 1 for a bunch of keywords is nice, but we would rather you ranked 3rd on keyword” x” and got 10 sales than 1st on keyword “y” and got none. Which is why we take the time to understand your business, and once we are working with you we then constantly monitor what we are doing, what effect it is having on your business and then adjust to make sure that everything is adding up to £’s in your bank account.
• Transparency. Whether it is a question about n SEO term, or a query about the work we are doing, or even a general question about your website, we will ALWAYS get you the answer you need. If we don’t know, we will find out for you and come back. What we wont do is try and bamboozle you with science, give you waffle or try and sell you something you don’t need. Right from day 1 with our projections for your business and all the way through your SEO campaign, we will try and ensure you have the very best and complete information to enable you to run and plan ahead for your business.
• Results. Seems strange to only mention results here, but we genuinely believe that the results are something that you should expect from ANY search engine optimisation company. Unfortunately that isn’t always the case, but with us we do everything we can to deliver the search results we forecast – in fact over the last 3 years we have a 93% rate of accuracy on our projections for clients and in over half of our target keywords we have delivered early. Of course there is no such thing as guaranteed SEO, but there is such a thing as justified confidence. Working with us will allow you to know that your business IS going to grow.
• Not just SEO. We have worked with a wide range of clients across a lot of industries, and gained experience both as developers and as SEO practitioners. Our experience means that we can offer you advice on how to leverage our SEO gains to give you extra returns in other areas of your business. Combining SEO with offline marketing, running a social campaign to improve the likelihood of selling to a prospect, working with your developer to increase conversions from visitors to customers and advising on general business development strategies are all things we do on a frequent basis. Partnering with Flosee is not just about getting an “SEO guy” to help. Its about having another team working alongside your business to help you grow, develop and grab the opportunities in front of you.
• Plain English. We absolutely detest any technical company that feels it has to hide behind complicated terminology. Any industry has its own buzzwords and abbreviations, but that does not mean that people outside that industry should be expected to know what they are. We don’t talk to you about your SERPs, we discuss your rankings in the search engines. We are confident enough in our work to tell you exactly what we are doing, how we are doing it and how that will benefit your business without trying to “geek out” and leave you wondering what on earth we are talking about.

This is only a brief snippet of the benefits of working with us, but as its a question we get asked by every potential customer we thought it was worthy of a blog post. If you already deal with us, please leave a comment about why you chose us – if you don’t already deal with us and have any questions – again please leave a comment

A search for "Ipswich Town" has a box for "Ipswich, Suffolk" (interestingly no data is being displayed in this box..?), a summary of ITFC and a prompt to refine the search to "Ipswich Massachusetts"

As would probably be expected, whenever I write on this site about updates at Google, I tend to do it from the point of view of the website owner, and how the latest changes will affect your business and your visibility in the search results. Well, don’t panic – this article will touch on that, but the first part is going to be focused on the experience of the end user. The reason for this is Google is about to roll out one of the biggest changes to happen in search for many years. There is absolutely no overstatement here, this change is absolutely massive and will completely change the way in which people search for products, services and information.

Up until now, the whole Google system has been built on strings – i.e. a sequence of characters in a particular order. There has been an element of semantics involved, but this has been quite rudimentary. To give this a real world example, if you consider a search for “table”, Google knows that this is item of furniture (as this is one of the most common occurrences of the word), and it also knows that it is a term used in web development. It also knows that it is commonly seen next to the words “mountain”, “league”, “time” and “dining”. So, on first glance it seems Google understands what a table is – but it doesn’t. Google simply knows that the string of letters t a b l e relate to other strings as mentioned above.

A search for David Beckham returns his Google+ profile, a recent status update and a recent news article

So, what is about to happen? What is so revolutionary that I felt the need to write this post? Well, Google knows that the current system is very limited and causes frustration to end users. Say, for example, you were looking for a table cut diamond. None of the above possibilities is even going to come close. So, Google has been busy buying up companies and partnering with massive sites like Wikipedia to actually understand what words mean. So instead of table being a string of letters, it is suddenly an object, or a thing. This is the difference between you knowing who David Beckham is, and actually knowing David Beckham. In the first case you only know what you have learned second hand. Whereas if you actually KNOW somebody you have a vast amount of information, which turns the 2 dimensional newspaper photo into a full 3 dimensional person with character traits, personality and a history.

If this all has you completely bewildered and my explanation has made it as clear as mud, perhaps this video will help you out:

The next question, of course, is how will this affect your website? What does Google’s change to object based search mean for your business? There is good news and there is bad news here. Lets start with the negatives:

• Quick fix SEO will simply not work with this new system. If you have been following any of our advice this wont affect you, but Google has made it completely clear throughout the last 12 months and with every signal about what is to come that it is determined to root out automated SEO tools, spam content and poor quality sites.
• You need to plan ahead with your search engine optimisation. Your entire website needs to have a logical structure. This is a good plan anyway, but Google will know that ski goggles and curtains have very little relevance to each other, so if your website links one to the other it is likely to damage your chances of ranking. However, if you have curtains and tie-backs linked to each other, this will actually help your chances of ranking well – simply because these objects ARE related to each other.
• The big players get a natural advantage built in. Because part of the intelligence of this new system is built on search behaviour, the big brands will get an automatic leg up. People searching for computers may quite frequently end up on the Dell website, so the knowledge graph will quickly begin to suggest Dell in order to act as a more useful engine. If however you are a SME, the percentage of people worldwide arriving at your website is likely to be statistically insignificant so your brand is not likely to get this benefit.
• When this rolls out, search engine rankings are guaranteed to be thrown in the air. Be prepared in the coming week(s) for your traffic levels to be up and down like a yoyo, and don’t panic! Keep doing what you are doing and the system will even out.

Searching for "Copernicus" gives you biographical information (with hyperlinks to related searches such as "University of Bologna"), a selection of books and also related people.

So, now the good news – and there is quite a bit of it:

• Well behaved websites who follow ethical search engine optimisation are likely to see a big hike up the rankings. Because this will be yet another way to combat the rule breakers, those who are doing things right should see a significant increase in traffic.
• You should be able to find what YOU want much easier. As an SEO company, this may sound a strange item to list as a positive. But we believe in improving all areas of your business, and even if the new knowledge graph saves you 30 seconds a day of searching, this is over 3 hours a year of extra productivity for you
• Google + is a major part of how Google is understanding the relationships between things. If your business has its own Google+ presence (and if not, you REALLY should by now have taken our advice. Go now and set it up. Now!), then you have the ability to help shape how your products or services are seen in relation to other things. Don’t set out deliberately to establish these relationships, they will just happen naturally from normal usage of your account, status updates and commenting. Trust me on this.
• The trust factor. Because Google will be seeing the internet through relationships, it will be much easier for you to transparently show your business can be trusted. Review sites, trade memberships and awards will be more visible and the connections between you and organisations / other websites will build credibility on a whole new level. Imagine somebody searching for your brand name and before they even click through to your site them being able to see your 5 latest rave reviews from clients, your awards and even some photos of your company. That customer has been told by Google that you are a brand to be trusted, and this in turn will lead to higher chances of each visitor becoming a customer.
• Less competition. Yes, we have mentioned above that junk sites are more likely to be filtered out, but there is also likely to be less competition simply by virtue of what will happen DURING a search. A customer searching for tables will be prompted to clarify whether they mean timetables, table mountain, table cut diamonds or furniture. AFTER they have clarified only relevant results will be returned, meaning a huge chunk of irrelevant competition has just been taken out of the equation. This is more useful to the end user, but it also means your SEO budget is going to become MUCH more efficient.
• Opportunity. The vast majority of YOUR competitors will be behind the curve with this change. And I mean around a year behind the curve – every single time a big change happens in search algorithms, less than 20% of websites react inside the first 12 months. needless to say, those that do get a HUGE advantage. So, in the next week or so (DONT PUT IT OFF ANY LONGER!!), ensure that you are using semantic wording within your website. That may sound really complicated, but it isn’t. If you are selling multi coloured stools you can now ensure that Google does not confuse this with exotic poo samples, simply by sprinkling related words such as seating, sit, bar, kitchen, etc etc around your description of the item. If you are writing information regarding cloud computing, it is now easier to clarify that you mean technology by using more descriptive text to ensure there is NO possibility of the article relating to water vapour in the sky. Adding in these extra words and being more clear on your descriptive text will help to ensure that you come up in the search results when a customer is searching for your product or service.

So, this will be hitting your screens very soon. It still hasn’t rolled out across all of the US, but it IS coming, it WILL affect your website’s traffic and it WILL cause people using SEO shortcuts to cheat the system to fall flat on their face. Don’t get me wrong, there will always be people trying to game any system, and some of them will win (in the short term anyway), but for the vast majority of genuine business owners, this should be a very positive step. And as an SEO professional, well my life just got that little bit more interesting

What are your thoughts on this? What are the questions you have? Post below and I will do my best to answer – and where I don’t know I will find out for you.

N.B. As you might expect I have had a play around with this new system, but at the moment it seems to be limited to people, places and brands. There are a few notable exceptions (i.e. a search for Andromeda is pretty funky), but the knowledge engine obviously needs to get a lot more data. Possibly this is the reason for the slow roll out….?

In the times of the Romans, if a legion failed to obey orders, the commanders could (and sometimes did) take the punitive action of “decimating” the ranks. This involved one legionary in 10 being selected, and the other 9 had to kill the unfortunate soldier, and was an excellent way to ensure that the surviving soldiers obeyed future orders. It seems that Google has lost patience with spam sites after all the warnings about these unwanted techniques, and has decided that a decimation of websites is in order to bring them back into line.

Image courtesy of Icons Master

The latest round of changes which is rolling out over today, tomorrow and Friday focuses largely on “spun content”. This way of creating junk web copy has been around for quite a while and started out as a way to avoid the duplicate content penalty. The idea is you take a perfectly good original piece of text, then put it into one of a variety of tools which would detect certain words and substitute them for alternatives, thus producing a completely new article without having to spend time writing it. This new content could then be put out to article sites, each of which would carry a link to your chosen site and thus help increase your link count, and as a consequence boost your rankings.

For example, this could be the original content:

The automatically spun version could be:

This spun content is really hard for humans to read (as by and large it is completely nonsensical) and has polluted search results for some time, as have the sites that benefit from them. So, expect to see some big shakers and movers in the search results very soon (if you haven’t already). And if you notice your own ranks have gone into freefall, by all means give us a call to see how we can put your business back on track.

Over the last two months, there have been a number of changes to Google’s algorithm which have sought to remove the benefit of poor SEO strategy, but the difference with this latest update is that now they are actively penalising sites for doing so. The potential issue here is that this could spawn a whole new subsection to the SEO industry – negative SEO. This would involve SEO companies intentionally applying poor link building methods to competitor sites, which would then see those sites being punished and finding their rankings drop. Knowing how intense the competition is on some keywords, it is only a matter of time before some of the companies that had previously relied on spun content and link networks switching their focus to applying these techniques to rival sites to see them drop. Doubtless Google already has a plan to detect this, but as a potential pitfall this could be huge.

Have you seen your rankings fall? Have you seen the quality of search improve or decrease in the last few months? Leave a comment below and let us know your thoughts on these latest changes.

The world of SEO is constantly shifting, and one of the reasons businesses come to companies like Flosee is that we keep on top of these changes and do whatever we can to keep our clients ahead of the curve and giving Google exactly what they want to see. Last year (and into this year), Google has been conducting a series of updates labelled “Panda”, and the main aim of these updates has been to strip out the junk content from your search results. By junk content we mean automatically created articles which read like a very bad translation from Latvian, and web pages which are purely there to serve advertising. By and large this update has been succesful, and whilst many SEO companies have cried foul (mostly because they were employing these exact techniques to achieve results), we have seen all of our clients benefit from this sensible progression to the Google algorithm.

Matt Cutts from Google serves notice to SEO companies

So, today we heard that Matt Cutts (from Google) has done something very unusual at a panel event at SXSW. He is serving notice on SEO companies that a change is in the wind which will have a big impact. This is unusual because Google generally doesn’t warn people that changes are on the way. They might say a change is coming, but they certainly don’t specify what it is. So immediately, my ears pricked up. Then I heard what the change was, and in all honestly I broke out in a cold sweat. Today, Matt Cutts announced:

“We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter”

What do the Google changes mean for business sites?

On the face of it, this means that GoogleBot is going to learn to identify when companies like ours have been involved, recognise it and remove the benefit. If this was the case, it would literally spell the end of the SEO industry. However, I then read the comment again, and calmed right down. What Google is actually going to do is to loo for OVER optimisation, and react accordingly. Well, Google has been doing this for years anyway – if you put the same word 200 times on a page, chances are very slim that you will actually rank for that word. This, once again, is a natural progression and a logical next step which will help to weadle out all those dodgy SEO practitioners who actually know very little about the industry but have read an article saying “do this 200 times and you are guaranteed to rank first” and then proceed to charge people to do exactly that.

Doubtless some innocent businesses will get caught in the crossfire, and some unfortunate companies will find that their SEO provider is one which uses over optimisation to get results. I am extremely confident that none of our clients will suffer as a result, but wanted to publish this quick article both to make you aware of the upcoming change, and to explain what it actually means. Feel free to comment below if you have further questions about this upcoming change to Google.

It is assumed that you know what a browser is, how to open one and how to get to Google

Anything in this article that is in italics is referring to a search term.

Now we have clarified that, let’s start searching.

Google search – how to improve your results

OK, so you know how to search for things using Google right?

Are you Sure?

Can you actually find what you are looking for 9 times out of 10?
Or, like many, are you finding it more and more difficult to locate relevant and useful information?

Well you may or may not know that there are actually various ways to improve your Google search results such as exact phrase matching & Boolean searching.

“What the hell are they when theyíre at home?” I hear you ask. Read on and all will become clear!

Google Search – Improve Your Searching With Yaks.

First, let’s get an understanding of how a standard Google search actually works.

I am going to do a search in google for yaks.

Why?

In the words of John Belushi in Animal House: “Burp, why not?”

Seriously though, the reason I am using yaks in this post is simple: you’re going to remember it a lot more than if I were to show you how to look for a Ford Focus in blue with a CD player, or some other mundane day to day object.

Obviously this does not apply should you be living in the Himalayas as they would in fact be day to day for you, but hey, I can’t please everyone.

The search term yak gives me a great opportunity to show you how Google search works and make it memorable. So Just go with it.

Let’s get cracking.
Open a new tab in your chosen browser and load Google.
In the Google search box type yak and click search / hit return.
Hopefully this should return roughly 66.6 million results.

… waits for stunned silence …

Yes, seriously! If you’re not doing this along with me you will have to trust me.
There will literally be 66.6 MILLION results for the word yak!!
I know right?

We could improve our search odds a little simply by making our term plural.
The search term yaks will only return a measly 2.9 million results in Google.

Our final search term in this post though needs the singular, so how are we going to find what we want in that lot?

Narrowing your Google search criteria

Hopefully we’ve all done this before: In order to find something specific about yaks we add another search term.

In your Google search type the following: yak shaving.

Just go with it.

This should return around 1.76 million results.
Yes really! I wouldn’t make this up you know, there really are 1.76 million results about yak shaving.

The point being that even though we have looked for the somewhat niche term of yak shaving, our Google search has still returned way too many results to be useful, and more importantly not what we’re looking for.

So let’s try again and add more search keywords to our query and see how that might improve things.

Search for yak shaving day, this has to be a lot more specific right?
Wrong. This will still return 1.65 million results, mainly due to the popularity of a certain surreal cartoon series.

Using exact phrases in Google search

To make it easier to understand why this is happening I should explain what Google is actually doing with your search term.

Google is searching for anything with all three words in it, but, it is NOT looking for them all together. Therefore a page featuring all three words where they are not related to each other will still appear in your results.

This is where exact phrases come in.

Type into Google “yak shaving day” including the quotes at the start and end.

Wow!! all of a sudden 1.65 million has been reduced to 26,000. Thatís about a 98% reduction in results (occasionally I have seen this same phrase return 68,000 results for no apparent reason but I’m sure Google understand why).

The other thing to note is that Google will normally ignore “stop words” (such as the, on, where, how, de, la, as well as certain single digits, single letters and punctuation) in your search query, but when using quotes the stop words will be included.

Find what you’re actually looking for

Although from the current results it seems this search query is likely to be about Ren & Stimpy, I am actually looking for a song by a band whose name I cannot recall. I just remember the name of the song.

So let’s try and get more focused results by adding the word song… “yak shaving day” song should be your new search query.

This should be more focused right? Produce less results?

Well, yes and no. It will be more focused but it actually returns more results because Google now has more options not less. We added the word song outside the quotes of the original search rather than inside.

This means there are more variables for Google to base its query on as there is our exact phrase AND the word song. It also means though the results should be focused on songs which is what we want.

We are still seeing a big focus on Ren and Stimpy though because this search term is most relevant, and probably most linked to via sites regarding the classic kids TV show.

Removing Irrelevant Results

In Google search terms the minus sign has 2 functions.

The first is in mathematical equations. If you didn’t already know, you can actually put mathematical equations into the Google search box to return a result. Give this a whirl some time: 2000*(12345+((18*((((1010*1010*2.5)-97250)*5)-2523))-67))-306.

The second is to remove items from your search by specifying words you do not want to see results for.

So, going back to our search query we’ll add one more word: “yak shaving day” song -ren

We are down to 10,500 results. That’s still quite a lot (although in Google terms it’s not) but look what’s number 1…”Yak Shaving Day by BEATRIX” so that was their name!!

Improving Google Searches – Summary

OK, so in all honesty I have never listened to that song and would never look for it (I’m sure it’s really good). In fact I am actually more likely to just watch the Ren and Stimpy videos.

Hopefully what I HAVE shown you though, is that Google searching can be as easy as you want to make it.

Had we known the name of the band it would have been much simpler to use a search like beatrix yak. Regardless of the 9 million results returned by that search our song is number 1.

If you can create a niche search in as few words as possible, the better your results will be; keep it simple when possible. If it’s not possible, use exact phrasing and Boolean searching with the minus sign to improve your chances of finding relevant information.

This really is just the tip of the iceberg as well. Take a look at the link below for more amazing things you didn’t know you could do via the Google search box.
http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/help/features.html

Hopefully you have enjoyed this post and more importantly found it useful.

If so please do share and feel free to comment below.

February was a record month, with FORTY changes to the Google algorithm, which (aside from making the mind boggle for SEO types such as me) have quite a big impact on the way small business needs to treat their search optimisation efforts. There is an official Google blog on the subject, but as one contact of mine said yesterday “I got bored reading all of that” – it is a very in depth article which is excellent for industry professionals, but what you want to know is:

1. What does it mean?
2. Does it affect me?
3. Do I have to change anything?
4. Does it matter?

So, I have pulled out the 8 most relevant updates, copied the segment of the relevant article for you, and after each segment I will answer those questions for you:

• More coverage for related searches.[launch codename “Fuzhou”] This launch brings in a new data source to help generate the “Searches related to” section, increasing coverage significantly so the feature will appear for more queries. This section contains search queries that can help you refine what you’re searching for.

  

  1. What does it mean? – When you search on Google, at the bottom of the results you sometimes see a related search section (as shown to the right). This section has now been refined and expanded so will show more often.
  2. Does it affect me? – Quite possibly. It opens up a whole new area of possible ways you can get seen by your potential customers. If somebody frequently searches for your company name in relation to a search query (i.e. “Web Developer Flosee”) then this search could now start to appear when people search for the shorter version of that word (i.e. when they search for “Web Developer”).
  3. Do I have to change anything? – No, but do keep an eye on your analytics keywords. If you see a big keyword is being used in conjunction with your company or brand name, then try and encourage these searches (and perhaps search yourself a couple of times a day) to get your brand/company name seen more often.
  4. Does it matter? – Yes. If you aren’t in this section, your competitors soon will be.
• More locally relevant predictions in YouTube.[project codename “Suggest”] We’ve improved the ranking for predictions in YouTube to provide more locally relevant queries. For example, for the query [lady gaga in ] performed on the US version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in times square], but for the same search performed on the Indian version of YouTube, we might predict [lady gaga in India].
  1. What does it mean? – The above explains this pretty well.
  2. Does it affect me? – Yes. If you publish videos, ensure you are including geo data (location based keywords and co-ordinates where possible). This will help you to be seen by people closest to you. Remember YouTube is actually the second biggest search engine on the internet.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – Aside from adding geographic tags to your videos, no.
  4. Does it matter? – Yes, this tweak brings the local search factors into social, with YouTube being a hybrid social / search site.
• Refreshed per-URL country information.[Launch codename “longdew”, project codename “country-id data refresh”] We updated the country associations for URLs to use more recent data.

  

  1. What does it mean? – Google tries to associate every single web page with a country, to ensure that the page is displayed to the most relevant audience. This data has been updated and refined.
  2. Does it affect me? – Probably not. Run a check on your domain (type in your domain and click “lookup” at Network Tools and make sure it shows your country.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – If the above search doesn’t show your target country, then you may need to look into switching hosting to ensure you come up on country specific searches. For example, google.co.uk will always favour UK based sites, and if you select “UK only” then non UK locations are filtered out of the results.
  4. Does it matter? – Only if you are currently hosted outside of your current target market.
• Data refresh for related searches signal.[launch codename “Chicago”, project codename “Related Search”] One of the many signals we look at to generate the “Searches related to” section is the queries users type in succession. If users very often search for [apple] right after [banana], that’s a sign the two might be related. This update refreshes the model we use to generate these refinements, leading to more relevant queries to try.

  

  1. What does it mean? – Similar to the first tweak mentioned above, this modification helps Google to build up a picture of what searches are related, then suggest these other search queries to the end user by looking at what previous customers have searched for when their first search has not been succesful.
  2. Does it affect me? – Yes. Especially for smaller businesses, coming up on big hitting keywords is very difficult. However, by looking at what searches are suggested this can give you an idea of less competitive keywords you can realistically rank for and target. These search strings are likely to see higher volumes of visitors if they are being suggested from the parent search. For example, trying to rank on the first page for “dog walker” is going to be a very hard task, especially for a smaller business with limited resources. However, the suggested search of “hire dog walker” has less than 10% of the competition.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – Yes. Look at the suggestions Google offers for your industry and market. Then ensure you are targeting these suggested search strings.
  4. Does it matter? – It is not vitally important, but it does offer an opportunity for the smaller business to compete.
• Improvements to ranking for local search results.[launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.

  

  1. What does it mean? – Local results in the past were ordered by how close they are to you, how many reviews the site had and the keyword density of the Google places listing. This change brings local search ranking into line with general search rankings.
  2. Does it affect me? – Yes, almost certainly if you are trying to rank for a local audience.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – In fact, this change makes life simpler, as it means that good practise with your search optimisation will benefit both general search queries AND your local search audience.
  4. Does it matter? – If you have been relying on a lot of traffic from the fact that you have good local rankings, then this could make a huge difference to your website traffic. Act quickly to ensure you keep your position, or if you didn’t have a good position before then putting good SEO in place will give you a big advantage.
• Panda update. This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.

  

  1. What does it mean? – Last years Panda update went a long way to removing spam from Google listings, mainly by devaluing shady SEO tactics and looking at a wider set of signals to determine whether a site should rank well for any given keyword. This is a further tweak to this update, and generally good news for legitimate business owners.
  2. Does it affect me? – If you have outsourced your SEO in the past, this could have big implications for you as the “quick fix” SEO tactics that some companies used will now not only cease to benefit your website, they could actually start to harm its potential to show up in search results. If you are seeing your search rankings fall through the floor, this is the most likely cause.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – Only if you are seeing big falls in rankings. If you are, I suggest you give us a call so we can identify what tactics are at fault and what we can do to reverse your decline.
  4. Does it matter? – Yes. The Panda update is a positive step for honest business – if you are not seeing any benefit then somewhere along the line your website has sent a wrong signal to Google, and that needs to be found and removed.
• Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.

  

  1. What does it mean? – When you build a link to your website, the page that links sits on is now subject to a more detailed check to see if the page has any relevance to the site it has a link to.
  2. Does it affect me? – Yes. You can no longer sprinkle links across the internet like confetti! Links coming to your website need to be on a page with content about your subject or industry, otherwise the link will be massively devalued.
  3. Do I have to change anything? – If you are in the habit of adding links to your site, you should now ensure that there is at least a paragraph (preferably a LOT more) around the link about your subject to make sure Google sees it as a “good” link.
  4. Does it matter? – Yes, this is another step by Google to counteract the past shady practises of certain sections within the SEO community.
• Improved local results.We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.

  

  1. What does it mean? – Google will try to match a user to a local website wherever it can.
  2. Does it affect me? – Almost certainly. If you haven’t already put in locality features to your website, do it now!
  3. Do I have to change anything? – Ensure you are added to Google Places with your full address and a link to your website, then ensure your website contains geotag data.
  4. Does it matter? – Yes! This can dramatically increase your exposure to your local audience. Most websites will not be taking the above steps, you doing so gives you a huge competitive advantage.

Feel free to comment below if these latest updates have had a positive or negative effect on yous business, or if you want us to explain in any more detail any of the points, and please click the sharing buttons to the left to let your business contacts know about these important updates.

In the field of search engine optimisation, there is always a “new technique”, a search algorithm update, a new source of links or a different approach on the horizon. Over the course of a year, as a company we spend a lot of money on info-products – generally pdf’s or video courses which are released by industry “experts” that open up new ways of doing things and increasing the rankings for our clients. To be honest, at least half of these products and purchases are complete tripe. But a minority of them will lead to something which gets added in to our own unique recipe and helps our clients to reach ever higher positions in search engine results. So, as a result I tend to subscribe to mailing lists of suppliers who, in the past, have delivered a decent product to me. Over the last 7 years I have kept quite a tight rein on these subscriptions, but even so I get around 1500 emails a week from various sources about a wide range of products. At least 1450 of these emails go straight into my deleted file without ever being read – I tend to scan the title and first line and hit delete on auto pilot. However I keep subscribed as each list will normally deliver at least one message per month that IS of interest. Until this week, when everything has gone crazy….

In the last 48 hours, from less than 50 email lists I have received nearly 1000 emails – this is quite unusual for these lists, which normally send me one or two emails per week each. What makes this even more unusual is the fact that all of the emails I received were about the exact same product, being sold by the same vendor from the same source. In fact, the only difference between the messages were the bonus items on offer if I were to place my order through the respective affiliate link. I have no problem with affiliate schemes (by and large they are another sensible marketing tool and enable smaller organisations to deploy an active sales force and generate potentially very large revenue streams). However, it would seem that with this one product, the commissions being offered were just TOO tempting for anybody to refuse.

I am not going to name and shame the product, because I genuinely believe that the product itself may very well be a true nugget of gold in the sea of manure that is information download products. However, anybody moving in similar circles to myself, interested in online marketing and SEO is doubtless subscribed to very similar email lists and will very likely recognise the subject of this article. I have three problems with what has happened, and I am going to go through them individually – if nothing else to vent some of the frustration I feel at marketing techniques that have gone so very badly wrong.

Firstly, the product itself is a series of online meetings. Needless to say these have yet to happen. However, 49 of the 50 affiliate emails I received spoke as if they had actually witnessed the effect of the meetings, and were very convincing in the argument that I NEEDED to be in the next batch. The 50th one at least had the good grace to inform me that the meetings were yet to happen, but likened them to tickets to The Rolling Stones – “the concert may not have yet happened but you KNOW its going to be awesome”. One very big difference here. The specific concert may not have happened yet, but hundreds of prior concerts HAVE. This product is brand new to market and has not been “road tested”. Being an intelligent buyer in a marketplace crammed full of above average intelligence buyers, this type of marketing message offends me. It is so very close to being dishonest that it destroys the credibility of the product actually being sold. Yes, the vendor has released previous products and knows his business well, but not every great recording artist translates to one you would like to see live. Equally some of the very best live bands suck in the studios….

Secondly, the volume of communications. OK, so the vendor has put out a good affiliate offer, great! Do I need to be bombarded with hundreds of emails, with an average of 20 per affiliate within 2 days? Is this going to make me any more likely to buy the product? NO! This is going to have one of two effects – either on one hand its going to turn me completely off the product because I hate getting junk mail, or on the other hand its going to make me hold off making a purchase as the offers of bonus items were getting ever more extravagant. Surely if I wait another 48 hours I can probably get my mortgage paid off? The level of affiliate one upmanship is nothing short of astounding. Again this undermines the credibility of the product, as I am now getting the impression that the commission must exceed 50% to get this level of excitement – which means the actual value of the product is less than 50% of what I will pay for it….do you see my logic here?

And lastly is the fact that past experience has told me that every single time a product is this over hyped, I end up completely disappointed. The last time I saw this level of marketing was around 6 months ago where the vendor in question ran a competition for a classic car to the affiliate who sold the most items. I paid out, and in all honesty the information in the product was tripe that I could have Googled for free. The vendor in question was one who I had bought many products from in the past and this product guaranteed I would NEVER buy a product with their name on it in the future. This time round, we have another vendor who I have purchased from in the past and in whom have a high level of trust. This marketing frenzy has destroyed my trust in them, and I can tell you for certain that I will not be buying this product, regardless of how many times people contact me about it.

So, the purpose of this article. Well, if you are involved in the marketing of this product (and you will KNOW from the above if you are), I hope that this sheds some light on why I at least have removed myself from your marketing. I would imagine you have seen quite a significant drop off of your subscriptions in the last few days, and this could very well be the reason for it. However, I know that the vast majority of readers of this blog are small business owners, and I think there is a very good message here for all of who are running a small business.

Marketing is the life blood of ANY business. The methods you choose to use will be varied and complex, but most businesses rely on one or two key areas of exposure. If your business is online, one of those areas is likely to be email, social media or SEO. If it is email, I think the message is very clear – do not abuse your subscribers as you will very quickly find your permission to contact them revoked. If social media is your bag, shouting “me me me” non stop will have the same effect. Your priviliges to contact those potential clients will very quickly be removed and your ability to market will therefore diminish very quickly. A drip feed approach may take more patience, but for both of these methods will ensure you bring your leads along with you, build a relationship with them and have a much higher opportunity to translate a contact into a client. Equally as important is to make sure that you are not telling your contacts the exact same information that everybody else is relaying to them. Your message needs to be unique, memorable and something nobody else is going to be saying. Granted, if your business model is being an affiliate this becomes a harder task to complete, but if that is your poison of choice, part of the job is creating new angles…..

All of the above is my own opinion. It IS a bit of a rant, and I tend not to do these on this website but this is a subject which has really got under my collar. I would love to hear your thoughts about email marketing – and if you are one of the affiliates in this particular case then by all means feel free to leave a comment. Please refrain from naming the product itself though, as I have no desire to be in the fight for affiliate traffic that is being waged in the search engines right now

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Like most businesses, we get called about three times a day and emailed about 10 times daily by companies offering to do our SEO for us. The irony of them calling us is not lost, but it does give us an opportunity to speak to some other people in our industry, and to find out what they are telling the business community at large. Today, this article is going to offer a set of guidelines you may want to consider to help you in choosing an SEO company if and when you are looking to outsource your SEO.

Choosing an SEO Company – the checklist

• Firstly, in our experience, the companies who are pro-actively engaging in cold calling to offer SEO services tend to not be very visible themselves on the web. Our first litmus test for choosing an SEO company would be whether you can find THEM when you search for something related to what they do. If they cannot walk the talk with their own business, it does not send a very positive sign that they will do any differently for yours.
• Secondly, are they offering you a cast iron guarantee that you will rank in position X within a set amount of time for a specific keyword? If so, then run as fast as you can in the other direction, and remove them from your available options for choosing an SEO company. There are so many variables in search engine optimisation, most of which are outside of any one persons control, that offering a guarantee is a sign that somebody does not actually understand the business. Sir Alex Ferguson would never dream of guaranteeing Manchester United would score in any given game, regardless of the opposition. The other team, the ground, the weather, fans and the referee all have some influence on the outcome. Granted, if his team don’t score he might be a little red faced and angry, but the same principle applies to SEO. We know that what we do works, and we know that all things being equal a customer will see their rankings rise at a predictable rate over a given period of time. But to guarantee this effect would be ignorant and misleading to customers.
• Thirdly – and this is a big one – what is the likely return on your investment? Given that we cant offer a guarantee of ranking, this one is a mix between mathematics, realism and experience, but it is a key ingredient both to choosing an SEO company and to deciding on your spend level. If you sell lower value items, and make on average 30pence per unit sold, a £500 per month SEO contract is going to need to deliver at least 2000 additional unit sales per month to make it worthwhile. Even if you ranked first place for your keyword, are there enough monthly searches to generate that kind of business? Alternatively, if you sell higher value items and each sale nets a profit of around £600, this same SEO contract would only need to generate a single sale per month to be worthwhile, but again, would top ranking for your keyword be likely to lead to this? There is a rough equation to be used when predicting your traffic and sales, and for the purpose of choosing an SEO company we advise you use this formula:

  On average, around 46% of all clicks go to the first result in search queries. You can find the rough number of monthly searches using Google’s keyword tool. This should give you an idea of traffic levels, and most websites work at a 1-2% conversion rate, so work at 1% of traffic, then multiply this by your average sale to see if SEO is a worthwhile choice for you.

  If your site is not eCommerce, but a conversion from the site is somebody getting in touch, then of your enquiries how many lead to sales? Factor all of this in at the start of any SEO discussion and you will have a much more informed choice ahead of you.

• Fourthly, does it make sense to put this work out to a third party? This is a judgement between your time and your cashflow. Put a value on your time (or the time of the person who would be doing your SEO activity for you), multiply this by the number of hours they would need to spend on it, and add in the cost of materials, software and SEO training if applicable. Now get some quotes for your SEO from companies like us. Compare the costs, and make a decision based on this. This is the point where you are choosing an SEO company or choosing to keep the tasks “in house”. Your SEO company should know what they are doing, so whilst they might cost more per hour the time is much more efficiently employed. Now look at this cost and go back to the last point about return on investment. Does it still make sense?
• And finally – and possibly most importantly – if you are going to go ahead and use an SEO company, seek references and ask for proof of what they do. If they cannot show you some results they have achieved for other customers, and are not happy for you to speak to those customers, then something is not quite right. Your SEO provider should be proud of their work, and their customers should be their best advocates. These referenes and proof of concepts should confirm what you have already found with the above checklist, but this last step is as important as any other when choosing an SEO company for your business.

Our guide to choosing an SEO company

SEO can make an incredible difference to your business. It would be great if you would consider asking us to help, or to provide a quote for you to evaluate our proposals. Ours is still an industry which is filled with providers who do not deliver on their promises, and who use underhand techniques – both in the original sales contact and in their actual SEO activity – safeguard yourself by asking these questions from the start and you should confident in choosing an SEO company.

From the IP-City Centre complex on Bath Street in Ipswich, we are offering a one day training course which will go through everything you need to know to promote your own business online in the search engines. The course will cover:

• How to identify the search phrases you should be targeting
• How to quantify the amount of potential customers searching for those phrases
• How to craft your website content to be the best fit for Google
• How to use various elements on your web page to make Google pay attention to your site
• How to find other websites that will link to you
• How to build links – ethically
• How to list your website with the major search engines
• How to manage your reputation online, and use review sites to enhance your marketing
• How to leverage social media platforms to drive customers to your website

The Ipswich SEO training course is designed for beginners – we promise no geek-speak, no techno babble and no jingo-lingo. The course is limited to 12 people, and will include a full question and answer session to make sure that you get the very best out of the day.

Course details:

Location – IP City Centre
Date – Thursday 23rd February 2012
Time – 10am to 4pm
Fee – £60 + VAT
Parking – Free

To book your place, please click through to the online reservation system – Book Now

Flosee Ltd has been running very succesfully, and has been consistently growing for some time. However, the pressures of the financial climate have lead to a number of customers reducing their spend, and a number of other customers going out of business leaving their bills unpaid. This is something that every small business is having to contend with at the moment and has been completely unavoidable.

Of the clients we have retained, we have seen an increasing amount leaving bills outstanding for ever increasing amounts of time. Again, many small businesses are having to face this same issue right now.

On top of all of this, we have had to deal with an unprovoked, sustained and vicious attack on our business from an individual which has been ongoing throughout 2011. As a direct result of their actions, we have lost a number of valuable clients and this is the straw that has broken the camel’s back.

The British legal system WILL catch up with this person, and I have every faith that justice will be served upon them. However, it is a very slow process which has meant that our business has been irreversably damaged by the actions of one individual, and three people have lost their income as a direct result.

For the time being, Flosee Ltd will continue trading with just myself and Sacha, and all current commitments will be met by us. We will be doing everything we can to complete projects early and continue to speak to new clients in the hope that we may be able to save these jobs. We hope that by publishing this post our customers will see that we have taken these actions to ensure we can continue to conduct business, and so that we can honour our agreements we have made. To the three employees leaving us, I can only apologise and wish them all the very best in their future careers.

How to handle online complaints

One of our first steps when running an SEO campaign for a client is to ensure that the company or brand is listed on public review sites and has a social presence. However, this is a double edged sword, and if you are running any kind of business it is only a matter of time before one of these websites is showing something you don’t feel reflects well on you or your brand. Reputation is key to a lot of things in business, and a complaint or gripe that is publically visible can really detract from your offering.

The thing to remember though, is that these complaints or negative comments already exist. Its just you may have been blissfully unaware or were dealing with it privately – so surely these comments being public is bad for your business, right? Actually, no – they are the perfect opportunity for you to demonstrate to clients what you will do when things go wrong. Consumers aren’t silly, and they know that even the best organisations in the world sometimes get it wrong. You now have an opportunity to prove that you are both human and dedicated to customer service.

Complaint resolution tips

We have put together a short list of how to help your reputation management and how to handle negative comments about you on the internet:

• Accept that complaints WILL happen. People are programmed to complain, its in our genetic makeup. Whether its about the temperature, the government or “What Aunt Shirley said about our Tracey last year”, humans have an amazing capacity to grumble. The fact that these complaints are now online means that you can deal with them.
• Be willing to listen. As well as liking to gripe, people also love to be heard. By engaging with the person who is upset, you are recognizing that there is an issue and validating them. Always respond in the place where the complaint was originally voiced (where possible, which it usually is) and if you need to then take it into a private discussion via email or telephone. When the issue is resolved, update the initial complaint and where practical ask the customer to also add their view of your actions.
• The hardest word…? This is the bit that can stick in your throat, but the part which will go the furthest to dealing with the vast majority of complaints. SAY SORRY! Recognising that the customer did not get the first class service they expected and apologising can really take the sting out of their anger. We have dealt with so many clients who are upset with their suppliers and are involved in long standing arguments. The vast majority of them tell us that if their supplier simply said sorry, they would be happy. If a valid point has been raised, also thank the customer for bringing it to your attention.



• Clarity of thought, clarity of message. Stay very clear about what you are doing, what the issue is and how you are dealing with it. This will reflect in the messages you respond with, and also allow other customers viewing the complaint to see that you are being reasonable (which you always must be!) and that you are being fair. If the complaint is about a misunderstanding on the customers part (i.e. your returns policy says items may be returned within 7 days and the customer took 20) then apologise for the misunderstanding, where possible take pro-active measures (such as clarifying your returns policy), and thank them for letting you know it wasn’t clear enough (even if in your opinion it was).
• Don’t get dragged into an argument. Always remember that if the complaint is public, so is your response. Whatever you do, do NOT get sucked into an argument. If things are heading this way, either enter into private discussions or walk away. Your other customers will see that you have tried to resolve the situation and that the complainant is being unreasonable. Just ensure that you have done what you can to put the fire out first.
• Do NOT ignore the issue. During the summer in Suffolk, a restaurant had a situation arise which involved some very upset customers and a stroppy waiter. This resulted in a raft of comments on the restaurant’s FaceBook page which needless to say were not very favourable. The next day, the FaceBook page had been deleted. This is a prime example of how NOT to deal with this kind of case. A lot of users had taken screenshots of the conversation and these then got posted all over the internet – on channels and profiles the restaurant had no control over. If they had kept the page open, responded to the complaints and pacified these customers then they could have restored the situation and actually ddragged something positive out of the experience. Offering some vouchers, explaining the discipinary procedures put in place and apologising would have made this storm in a teacup disappear much quicker than the actions that were actually taken.
• Choose your battles. There are occassions when a customer is being unreasonable – or perhaps they aren’t even a customer, but a competitor trying to discredit you. If it is a competitor (and you are sure of this) then you have two choices – engage and be reasonable, or remove the comment. It is VERY rare we advise removal of a complaint, but if you are being sucked into an argument that you don’t want in public and this is not a customer, then sometimes it is better to not engage at all. If you do engage, treat it as any other complaint – be reasonable, be clear and try to resolve the issues. If things are not progressing, then step out of the discussion.

Effective handling of EVERY complaint

Customers are canny enough to recognise unreasonable behaviour, and if you have shown that you have tried to sort things out and the other party has kept returning with the same demands or not listened, then you can be sure they will see that you have tried and view it positively.

ANY business will have complaints and negative comments about it – if you don’t yet then I promise you, its only a matter of time. Whether they exist is not the issue, its how you deal with them that will affect how your brand is viewed by potential customers.

If you are still struggling with how your brand is seen online, please get in touch with us – we can offer advice, undertake reputation management on your behalf and in extreme cases we can help to revitalise your online reputation and start putting some serious positivity into the way people view your company online.

If you have visited us recently, you will know that we have been running a one off local SEO package for a local business, Gemma Thompson from social media illumination in Woodbridge. Normally we work on a month by month basis, covering a new set of keywords every month and consistently improving the expose a company can get through natural search results. For Gemma, we wanted to try something a little bit different and do a single blast of our monthly programme, and see what the effects were. This serves two purposes – firstly it gives her business some great exposure and helps to bring in extra business for her (this is what we are all about), but secondly it gives us a chance to demonstrate to everybody else just how good and effective our SEO service is. Luckily Gemma has been kind enough to grant us permission to publish the results, and we think for a 10 day project what you are about to see is pretty amazing.

If you didn’t see the original post, please take a look here

The results of our local SEO Work

One of the first completely unintended consequences of this work was that our original post mentioned four keywords we were targeting. These all linked to Gemma, but Google decided that the blog post was very important and therefore ranked us in first place for all of the keywords mentioned. Needless to say, we apologised to Gemma and then set about ensuring her site was getting the full benefit. So, in order to show the results this time, we have popped them into an image – just to make sure the same doesn’t happen again!

So – lets look at those four words first:

However, in total we looked at 331 keywords at the start of our campaign. On November 27th, only 46 of these keywords were in the top 100 results of Google.co.uk. On December 7th (today), just 10 days later we have a whopping 132 keywords in the top 100, the 19 that were there originally have all risen except for 2, and we have secured two first place results. In total, the standings compare as follows:

_{N.B. Top 5 results include top 3, top 10 include top 5 etc etc.}

Local SEO – the next steps

What this has done, over the course of a ten day period, is to alert Google to the presence of this website on a much bigger scale than was previously happening. As a direct result, the search engine has revisited this website and made a new evaluation about whether the content is actually suited to the search results. From the changes in rankings, it would seem that the search engine has decided that yes, this site does warrant a higher visibility to customers. Our local search solutions focus heavily on what keywords YOUR customers are using and then we work on those words to put you directly in front of customers about to make a buying decision. The next steps for this campaign? Well, the obvious step would be to build on this success with a sustained programme of attack. This is not always possible for a number of reasons, so we will work with the client to ensure that the maximum benefit can be gained from the “shove” we have given this site in the rankings. It is also important to note that these rankings will continue to rise over the next 4- 6 weeks as more of the links we have built are discovered.

Interested in our Local SEO Service?

If you would like us to look at your website to see how our local SEO service can help your business find more customers, please contact us, or use the comment form below to ask us to review your website. Our local SEO packages start at just £99 per month, and a one off shot like the one demonstrated in this post is just £150.

Today saw the launch of our latest project for Ipswich client Lesley Ann White – a provider of Energy Performance Certificates and Inventory Control services. We don’t normally post an article about each and every project, but this one has a couple of features which we thought would be of interest to people considering using Flosee for their web design needs.

To begin with, our first encounter with Lesley was on November 1st 2011. We met at a local networking event (Office Drinks) and after a couple of minutes of showing the work we have done for other clients and explaining the way in which we work with clients, the seed had been sown. Lesley contacted us the next morning and arranged a meeting to discuss her new website.

Our initial meeting was to discuss how the website would work, what information it would contain and who the target audience would be. As we are also a search engine optimisation company, and our current offer gives free web development to customers using our SEO services, we also discussed the way in which we approach SEO and started developing a plan for this new site which incorporated the design and content from the very outset.

Suffolk Web Design – The Process

One of the things that worried Lesley most at the start of the process was the way in which the whole web design would progress and what was needed at what stage. One of the best bits of feedback we have had from her was that it would massively help if this process was outlined in writing, and in true Flosee style we have listened to this and all future clients will have a full project roadmap right at the start of the design – every single project is different, but we hope you find the following example a useful demonstration of the way in which we work with clients:

The brief – the start of the web design process always has to start with a full discussion between the designers and the customer to make sure that we are reflecting the correct image for your business, and that the website being created is the best fit for the business it will serve. For Suffolk web design clients this would always be a face to face meeting, for clients from further afield this may be a conference call.

Colour schemes and graphics – The next stage is to agree a colour scheme that will work with existing branding, and that will complement offline activity. In addition we need to gather logos, promotional imagery and any other photography or graphics the client wishes to have on the website. We will also make a list of any extra graphics we need to acquire or create to complete the site

Site structure – We will go over the full range of options and possibilities in terms of the website structure, and how this will be reflected in your web design. Deciding what needs to be on your website and how this will be presented to the customer is a combination of our expertise and your knowledge of your own industry, so we will work with you to get the best solution for your business.

Initial design – After the initial briefing, normally within a week we will come back to you with our first design. Depending on what has previously been discussed this may be one design with options available, or a range of designs. The idea at this stage is that this is a work in progress, and we actively seek your feedback to make sure that what we are working towards is YOUR idea of a great website. There will be no content on your website at this stage, it is purely a case of getting the aesthetics right in the web design.

Your feedback – We will then go through all of the comments, likes and dislikes you have given us and modify your design accordingly. We will then come back to you within a couple of days to get the ext batch of feedback and opinion. This part of the process is repeated as many times as necessary to get a great web design complete – all of our web design is fixed price so these revisions NEVER incur extra cost for you.

The content – Once we have your web design nailed down, we then add your content to the website to flesh it out and bring the whole project together. Some clients like to provide all of the content, some like us to create it all but most supply some content and ask us to rewrite it for their website. We will always provide advice, hints and tips to ensure that the words on every page of your website are full search engine ready and designed from the outset to land you top rankings in Google.

Content review – now that your website is coming together (normally 2-3 weeks after outset of project) we will ask you to cast your eye over it again and once again invite your feedback. As always we will be happy to advise and answer any questions you may have and to make any revisions you require.

The handover – Now that your website is complete, if you are a Suffolk web design client we will arrange a face to face meeting, or where this is not possible book a slot for a conference call and go through the final tweaks required on your website, page by page. Once you are completely happy with every aspect of your website, we will then go through the controls available to you and make sure that you are comfortable managing your website, adding content and keeping your website fresh (only on dynamic websites – static websites don’t require this stage).

The launch – At this stage (normally 18-25 days into the project) we launch your website onto the world wide web. We start our programme of SEO and ensure that all of the major search engines are aware your website exists and are ready to add your content to their search results.

Ongoing support – If you are a Flosee client, you know all about our after care. Regardless of how long ago we built your website, if you have a question just call or email. Our success is measured by how well your website performs, so we will ALWAYS be happy to help you, give quick refreshers where memory has faded or give pointers to getting the very best out of your website.

Web Design with YOU in control

Our job is to help, support and guide you and provide the technical whizz-bangery to get your business online. However, we don’t lose sight of the fact that this is YOUR website, and at every single step of the web design process, we make sure that you stay in full control of your website, and that we keep you fully informed of our progress and offer you the very best advice. Would you like us to look at your web design needs? Simply leave a comment below or get in touch and we will call you back to discuss the various web design options available to you.

One of our most popular services is our local SEO package, which is designed specifically for small businesses who are targeting their local area with niche products and services and want to increase their exposure to customers using search engines. Recently, we were asked to start a local SEO campaign for a business from Woodbridge which specialises in offering training and support for Twitter, FaceBook and other social media channels. The video below shows where this site is in the search results at the start of our campaign and focuses on a single keyword, showing the simple techniques we employ to laser in on each keyword and raise the profile of that keyword which then feeds through to an increased local SEO ranking very quickly.

Local SEO – the starting position

In total, we have identified nearly 500 target keywords for this local SEO campaign (the search queries people will use when searching for the products or services offered by this customers), and in the video we look at just one of them – “Twitter Marketing Help Woodbridge” which on the 27th November 2011 is sitting at 7th position in google.co.uk for UK specific searches. Now this is quite obviously a very specific local SEO search string, and not one which is likely to bring in thousands of visitors to the website in question, BUT the few people who are searching for this keyword are exactly the type of people that we would want to be arriving at this particular website. These visitors would be “pre-qualified” – i.e. people who have searched for this will be VERY interested in the services on offer at socialmediaillumination.co.uk. We have also made a record of the other target search keywords within the local SEO campaign, and sent these to the business owner. For complete clarity though, below you will find a cross section of keywords along with the current position on 27th November 2011 (all keywords checked in google.co.uk for UK only results):

Twitter Marketing Woodbridge: 18th
Using Social Media for Marketing Sudbury: 14th
Social Media Marketing Help Woodbridge: 14th
Social Media Consultancy Ipswich: 9th

Local SEO – the solution

In order to target these (and many other) keywords, we have a multi platform local SEO approach, including:

• Directory submissions – we will submit this website to a list of over 4000 directories.
• Search engine location services – we will ensure this website appears on Google maps, Yahoo Local and other relevant search engine driven geographic services.
• Review sites – we will submit and/or optimise the website listing on major community review and consumer websites such as Yelp, Qype, Touchlocal etc
• Profile creation – we will create various profiles on a targeted list of relevant websites
• Blog commenting – as demonstrated in the above video, we will find RELEVANT, well respected and recent blog posts which relate to the customers website, then submit comments which show that we have read the original article and add value to the page. These comments will in turn include backlinks to the clients’ website which are incredibly focused on individual keywords

Interested in our Local SEO Service?

If you would like us to look at your website to see how our local SEO service can help your business find more customers, please contact us, or use the comment form below to ask us to review your website. This post will be updated in the next 14 days with a new video showing what effect our work has had for this local SEO client.