Underrated.co.uk – Search Engine Optimisation

Drawing visitors to your website isn’t always achieved by simply telling people how wonderful your service/business/website is and hoping for the best. Any promotional strategy requires a degree of dedication and thinking outside of the box. One helpful technique is to predict a trend (before the 2008 US election I was the first one of the first websites to heavily promote a Barack Obama Flash Game on my online games site and I reaped the rewards via the search engine ranking).

Other techniques involve being controversial (that always gets peoples attention), or offering something that’s novel (a top ten list for instance). Occasionally sites offer a service so useful that people feel that they simply must link to it. Depending on the theme of your website and no matter how formal is it, there will always be an opportunity to linkbait in a way that is fun but perfectly on topic. This, in my view, is the very best form of advertising because people feel that they have discovered your service, rather that having it forced upon them. A great example of linkbaiting is premier holidays 5 Insanely Small Inhabited Island article. It takes the theme of the website and adds a fun twist. The result is that thousands of additional visitors interested in the topic at hand visit your site. That can only be good for business. 301 useless facts is another obvious linkbait example. This time it’s off topic, but as the site relates to SEO, it’s a great idea of conveying to clients that you’re able to draw people in through use of such techniques.

Perhaps my biggest linkbaiting success relates to the Deal or No Deal gameshow. I added the online game version to my old website (now sold) and included an incensive to join a bingo site featuring a pay version of the game with real cash prizes. The thinking was that many of those interested in the game had a gambling mentality and hence a “free £10 play” offer would appeal to them. I promoted the game heavily and the combination of a fun game and real money alternative really send its link popularity soaring. The linkbacks came flooding in to the extent that the game is still top 5 in the uk for the term “deal or no deal” and top ten worldwide. The revenue brought in by this one page alone was considerable and it really demonstrated to me what can be achieved by lateral thinking. To this day many thousands of people visit the page each week as a result of those initial promotional efforts. This is how popular it become at the time:

A quick fire list of five tips that will help you get off to a good start with SEO:

1) Update Frequently

Not all sites require regular updates, but it is important to update your site as often as possible. If it’s not a traditional daily update style site, then why not think of adding industry news or a blog? Google and co are very fond of web properties that are current, and frown upon stagnant sites.

2) Reduce duplicate content

If you have an article site, make sure that you dont run a mirror, sister site or sub domain with the same or very similiar content. Google penalises duplicate content and as such  there is nothing to be gained from reproducing it elsewhere. The same applies to underhand activities like ripping off other peoples content. It will be noticed and you may well be penalised for it.

3) Location…location…location

If you run a site aimed at a regional audience, then your aim should be to appeal first and foremost to that very audience. For a UK targetted site for instance, you can better achieve this aim by hosting your site and domain within  the UK, primarily exchanging links with sites from the UK, getting featured in UK articles etc. Do all you can to make your web property ‘the go to place’ for visitors from the geographical area you are targetting.

4) Don’t be anti social

Tthere are so very many social networking sites and services that it’s no longer really an option to shut yourself off from them and just slog away in an attempt to improve your popularity. You need to help your content become viral on sites like digg.com , inform people of updates or musings on twitter.com , get your friends on facebook talking about a new service you’re offering and so on. It all helps and the backlinks will help too.

5) Spot Trends

If you become successful in a niche it’s all too easy to be so satisfied with what you’ve achieved that you make no effort to improve. Big mistake. There will always be competitors on your tail just waiting for you to ease off the gas. The net is fast moving, and if you miss a trick, by the time you’re back paying attention you’ve lost valuable time, which in turn can translate to customers, website ranking and reputation in general. Stay focussed, keep an eye on your competitors and any new developments in your line of business.

Before any successful web venture can begin you will need a home for it. It’s worth giving serious thought to your choice of domain name because in both branding and SEO terms this choice does have very real implications. Whilst your concern may not be picking an “unfortunate sounding” domain name ( www.ViagraFix.com - ViaGraphics, www.OddSexTractor.com – OddsExtractor,  www.WeBone.com -WebOne), you should take the following suggestions on board:

1) Do not use numbers or hyphens in your domain name. It’s a no brainer on the number front, and as for hyphens, they make it difficult to verbally convey to people what your domain is, and they may forget the hyphen at a later date and not be able to navigate back to your site. It just doesn’t sound or look professional either, and since first impressions are important, it’s a  bad idea. A hyphen is a word separator in search engine optimisation terms, so does offer a very slight SEO boost, but it’s not worth the trade off in my view.

2) Keep the domain name short and snappy. Nobody wants to remember a four word domain and again it just doesn’t look professional. In any case, for SEO purposes cramming your domain name full of keywords is pointless (unless you add hyphens between the words, but then it looks even less appealing). What’s an easier to remember and more attractive domain name for a daily update funny video site dailyhaha.com or something like the-very-best-funnyvideos.com ? If you struggle to find an appropriate name, try BustAName . It’s a useful word combiner tool.

3) Use a keyword in the domain name. This isn’t a must, but it’s far from being  a bad idea. If you offer a pet grooming service words like grooming, animal, cat, dog and pet will both describe your service and help you choose a domain name. It may help to have a two word domain name, one of which descibes the service on offer  and another fairly expressive word. If your URL is too stuffy and boring it can put people off your service. Though of course you have to match the expectations of your audience. If you run a funeral home, calling it groovygraves might not earn you many customers.

4) Go for the .com if available. Assuming that you wish to offer a service worldwide, choosing a .com domain extension is the best option for you. It may be worth going the .net route should you really, really want the domain name in question but it’s still second best. There are excetpions though, if you run a local service you may wish to choose the domain name relating to that country (.co.uk for the UK for instance). This will gain you a placement in the search engines local listings for that country – ‘pages in the UK’ in google for instance*.

5) Register multiple domains. If your company name is unique and currently not registered then consider buying the .com, .net and regional (if applicable) variation of your domain name. There would be nothing worse that building up a brand, only for someone else to try to monopolise on your success by purchasing a name that you could’ve grabbed for an insignificant amount. 

*Regardless of your domain name extension, hosting your website in a territory will also result in you achieving local placement in that country.