Teknet

[SEO Infographic] The Justice League Of Google: Panda-man & Penguin

Rebecca Troth — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:25:02 +0000

A cheeky little infographic I created with a very basic look at Google Panda & Google Penguin updates.

Introducing The Justice League Of Google! Made Up Of Panda-man & His New Sidekick Penguin…

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The Essential Conversion Rate Optimization Checklist For 2012

Joe Davies — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:33:23 +0000

1. Does it have Professional Design or Does It Look “Good”?

Everyone has their own opinion of how something looks and we can all safely say when something looks really bad. If you can’t decide this in house and have many mixed opinions, send your choice of designs to colleagues in other departments, and trusted customers to see what they think.

2. Is it Functional – Easy To Use?

Are the pages easy to navigate? Is the website functional? Can you get to where you want to quickly, in two clicks or less?

3. Does It load fast?

If it doesn’t get onto the techies quick, make sure images are optimised for web use, and the website is on a good fast server. Also check the header to ensure you are only loading necessary data.

4. SSL on sensitive pages?

Make sure you have an SSL certificate on sensitive pages such as payment or members areas. Users love to see that padlock!

5. Trusted Certificate? (eg. Verisign, BBB online, Hackersafe)

A trust certificate significantly improves visitors trust in the site, and shows the website/company is high quality and safe to use.

6. Contact Information easily accessible and visible?

Contact information should be included on a page, including address, emails and phone numbers. Phone number should preferably be visible on every page.

7. Product Information All Included On Page? (Specifications, Prices, Delivery Details etc)

Although some business models and processes do not allow all information to be available upfront, it is best practice to include as much as possible and allow it all to be visible.

8. Powerful Headline? – Attention Grabbing, Highlighting the Benefits

Headlines are the first thing people read when lading on a website. It’s instinctive, we read newspaper headlines, magazine covers and subject lines of emails to make the decision whether or not we’re interested enough to carry on reading. Does yours give users a reason to be intrigued? Interested?

9. Delivery & Payment Methods Visible?

This gives users extra trust, showing logos of payment methods (card and payment logos) and a clear indicator of delivery options and times.

10. Accreditations?

Does the website include industry awarded accreditations or logos? This is another one that adds trust!

11. Testimonials & Case Studies?

Make sure the website includes testimonials and case studies from real people. Don’t simply list the testimonials on a page, include some of the better ones on the homepage or in the sidebar. Also highlighting parts that are particularly good helps the overall impression.

12. About Us or Meet The Team page?

Potential customers like to know they are dealing with real people. Include a company history (when you were established is definitely something to include), photos of the office/shop, and photos of people in the team. This is your chance to really show your company personality whatever it may be. Include individual member’s interests, or strange facts, lunchtime humour. We aren’t in the 90s anymore, companies and consumers are changing – a personal, quirky, authentic approach is the way forward! Show your companies personality.

13. Map On Contact Us Page?

Show that you have a physical office – once again, increasing trust.

14. No Spelling, typography & Grammar errors

Any small mistakes can send potential buyers running. There is absolutely no margin for error.

15. Website FAQ section?

FAQ’s provide an easily accessible way for potential customers to find answers to questions. It’s an easy way to reiterate and bucket all the essential information in one place. Potential customers can reference this before they buy – it will save phone calls and emails, and lower purchasing barriers.

16. Money Back Guarantee?

Guarantee’s give potential customers reassurance that you will provide your service or product to their expectations. Their purchase instantly becomes risk free. Don’t be afraid to make you guarantee bold and confident. 365 day money back guarantees have proven to be very popular.

17. Privacy Policy?

Always include a privacy policy on the website.

18. Email Capture? Offer something for free (capture email addresses)

Don’t let your unsure visitor go away without giving you their email address. Offer a buying guide for free, and email them a few days later to remind them of your offer or product. For example your buying guide could be: “10 things you need to know before you purchase a forklift” or “5 things your current IT Support company isn’t telling you” – these are both intriguing and inject a certain degree of scarcity.

19. Social Elements (FB, Twitter)?

A website with a social element will instil more trust – better still make sure you are active on the social platforms – encourage people to ‘like’ your page or ‘follow’ your twitter. Including links to your social profiles, or feeds from your profiles on your site will massively increase your portrayal of interactivity with existing clients and potential new ones.

20. Terms & Conditions?

Always include a full set of terms & conditions on your website.

21. Short Conversion Funnel?

How long is the conversion funnel? Is it long winded? Could some steps be removed? Make sure the conversion funnel is short and focused.

22. Can You See Your Call To Action From 6ft Away From The Screen?

Your call to action must be clear and focussed. It must be big, and tell the visitor what to do – “Click here to find out more” – “Click here to see prices”.

23. Live Chat?

Include a live chat on your website to improve visitor interaction and lower barriers to purchase. Someone will have to man this during business hours.

24. Feedback Form?

This not only allows visitors to provide feedback on your site, but it also shows to visitors you are actively receiving feedback to improve their experience and are therefore serious about your business. I think they call that win win!

25. Company logos?

What companies have used you in the past? What companies have recommended you? What newspapers, blogs or publications have been written about you? Been on the news? Been in the local paper? Have an advert on tele? Much like accreditations, testimonials and case studies, large authorities company logos will give you a lot of trust. Don’t think you have any? Are you on Google Places? Include that on your site – ‘As seen on Google Places’. Are you on any industry directories? What about Yell? Include it. Authority logos help!!!

26. Video?

Create a video about your service and product and include it on the side. Preferably include real people on the video, or at least a real voice (not a boilerplate voiceover – everyone uses THAT voiceover). Use your accent, be real. At the very least make a short video, like a presentation that details the benefits of your site – some people digest videos easier – this is the YouTube age afterall!

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SEO = Secure Every Opportunity

Rebecca Troth — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:56:31 +0000

Happy Easter Week! My name is Rebecca Troth, and I am the newest addition to our TEKnet SEO team. This is my first written blog after 6 months of working in the SEO industry, and the first time I have had the confidence to express my own opinions.

Whenever you look for SEO all you will find is companies and freelancers everywhere trying to shout “We will get you to #1 in Google!” louder than everyone else, and this narrow minded competition is causing the wrongful education of those looking for search engine optimisation.

Don’t get me wrong, I have been taught and I know that those #1 spots in Google extremely important, they are the boiled down definition of SEO after all! But, in my opinion, they are not the definition of an SEO campaign.

S-E-O Cam-paign /S E O kamˈpān/
Definition: A holistic marketing strategy, with the goal of increasing brand awareness, traffic and
sales through the medium of search.
http://www.teknet.org.uk/SEO-Secure-Every-Opportunity/

So many companies offer “instant #1” which is a clever way to advertise PPC isn’t it? But as good as this is, I am a firm believer in organic! And I have good reason too:

Before I started at TEKnet and wised up to SEO, PPC, Google and all the rest I was an ignorant and lazy consumer.

If I wanted to watch something, Googled it.

If I wanted to know something, Googled it.

If I wanted to listen to something, Googled it.

If I wanted to buy something, Googled it.

I would literally type anything into the almighty Google, trusting it would return to me the answers I wanted, but I can honestly say I never once clicked one of those yellow highlighted search results, avoided them in fact! Why? I’m not sure… maybe I thought they were spam… or not actually relevant to what I was searching… whatever the reason, I wouldn’t use them and I know I wasn’t alone! There’s a reason Google hasn’t turned into a bid mad free for all, and they can claim it’s because that are want searches to be for the user and all natural like free range eggs, but it’s not, it’s because the majority of surfers do not use the ads! To summarise: Organic Wins.

Second Hand Clients

Now these unfortunate mislead companies are the victim of what I like to call a Bimo (Bad internet marketing organisation) and they are scared and turned off SEO so much that they aren’t even sure why they are talking to another SEO company. They often come with confused thoughts upon the industry, which has come from being deceived into believing what’s bad is good, and what’s good is unimportant. I have seen a few cases where they are so blinded by being number 1 for random searches that get no traffic like “the world’s best tomato plant” that they don’t understand why they should be looking into other marketing methods, or why they should be using social media, or why they should make regular blog posts. They just want to be number 1 for un-researched, and basically pointless keywords as fast as possible!

#1 #1 #1 #1 #1

If you know about SEO, then you should know that it’s not a fast process. It’s like building a house…

> You need to use the relevant necessary resources, research is the key!
> Your house has to be strong enough to withstand the local weather conditions
> You can’t afford to rush for quantity, each new brick has to be as strong, if not stronger than the one before (Nothing more true that a chain being only as strong as its weakest link)
> You need to ensure there are simple to follow road signs pointing in your direction, and that your house in front of the Joneses in your street
> You need to share your address with friends so they know where to find you (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest & more!)
> You have to ensure conventional and welcoming interior so visitors will be encouraged to stay

Do you follow my logic? Well, if not I’m basically trying to say that SEO has to be constructed and worked on in order to produce the best results. If you are on a good SEO campaign there should be set goals and plans to move forward with and progress to, this way you can ensure growth with each step. Even if it seems like not much is happening at first, it won’t be long until everything begins to come together and form great optimising results. After all, if it didn’t the SEO industry would have faded out before we even got out of the 90s! I believe that a campaign should be something that’s long-term both with SEO and the company you choose, not just a quick fling to see you to number 1 then that’s it. You should want to marry that search term to your webpage, not have a one night stand with Google! So if you are looking for SEO, make sure you listen and research what your liaison is saying, express your ideas and goals so that they can come up with a bespoke plan for you and your business. It is all about being open minded on both parts and not diving head first into the pool, make sure its deep enough and let the professionals teach you how to swim!

Here at TEKnet we know how important all aspects of digital marketing are to SEO! We create unique ideas and plans for each business on how they can improve their own brand awareness as well as traffic and sales. The first steps of all our campaigns is to optimise, optimise, optimise! We analyse all of your content, title tags and meta tags to ensure you hit all of the right targets for improving rankings and we take care of all offsite optimisation, including link building and social signals.

P.s. Don’t Forget to share this beautiful blubber!

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How much time should I spend on Meta tags?

Joe Taylor — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:21:43 +0000

Here’s a short video from Matt Cutts (Head of Spam) at Google talking about Meta Tags.

In short, you should really only be focussing on the description tag nowadays. The keywords tag is no longer followed by Google or any other Major Search Engine so keyword stuffing their won’t get you any magical high rankings!

On the other hand focussing on the Meta Description is definitely worth a few minute’s thought. Any good SEO will tell you that writing a great and compelling description tag can often help you increase click through rates and conversions when vistors enter your site.

Write a well optimised description tag to clearly define what that page on your website is about and what people can do on that page.

Forget about Keyword Tags!

Cheers Joe.T

Watch this video on YouTube.

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Google Infographic Past to Present!

Rebecca Troth — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:58:57 +0000

A little infographic of some Google facts and figures.

I was doing some research into Googles origins and current statistics and decided to make this:

Hope you liked it and maybe learnt something! Catch you laters

Rebecca Troth

SEO Executive

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[SEO Infographic] The Different Types Of SEO Client (Which one you should aim to attract!)

Rebecca Troth — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:03:09 +0000

Our very first infographic on the Teknet Blog. It’s kinda tongue in cheek, but has a dark underlying meaning… Well worth a read if you get 90 seconds, share it if you like it!

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5 weird ways to convince your elderly Boss into investing in SEO

Joe Davies — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:49:29 +0000

Being a marketing manager, or ecommerce manager means you need to make decisions about what channels to invest in, or rather, what channels to convince your boss into investing in. SEO can be a strange channel to explain to old school Bosses. It doesn’t follow traditional advertising channels like Magazines, TV and Pay Per Click.

SEO is about increasing your natural visibility in the search landscape, meaning free traffic (each click costs £0) for years to come after the initial investment (sometimes there may be a maintenance fee in competitive markets).

This is done by optimizing your site so search engines can spider it more efficiently and understand more of what it’s about so that they can deliver it in more deserving positions.Here are some ways you can convince your boss into investing in an SEO Company (assuming your elderly boss is a he):

1. Ask him if he’s looking to purchase anything over the next week or so

Whatever he says ask him if you can show him a simple search for that item to help him understand SEO. Let’s just say it’s a treadmill.

Show him the SERP and point out to him the PPC ads. Tell him they will be paying per click, anything from 1.00 to 5.00 (may not be completely true but always a good ball park figure).

Now show him the organic listings and tell him they are not paying anything per click. Zero. Nothing. Zilch.

Explain they have invested in an SEO company to do the work initially and may be paying a small maintenance fee, but it will be a fraction of PPC costs.

2. Explain how it’s better to advertise to people that are looking for you (invited ads), rather than interrupt people with advertising…

Being an old school boss he will be familiar with interruption advertising. Its how TV and magazines work… and pretty much all advertising until search engines came about.

SEO is different. People are actively searching for you, they want to see your “ad”. Even though you’re not technically advertising, you have a ‘natural listing’ which will bring you nicely to your next point.

3. Explain to him how SEO isn’t advertising

He could potentially screw his face up at this, but SEO isn’t advertising. It’s a natural placing. You can’t pay Google directly to be there.

And search engine users are now knowing the difference between PPC and Ads. The natural results are trusted more because they aren’t advertising.

You can only pay an SEO company to ‘influence’ Google to place you higher in the results. The natural results have no advertising going on.

4. After a large investment, you benefit for years

SEO is really a long term investment. You pay for a short time 6-12 months, in some cases maybe 24 for the initial work and link building. Once you have maximum exposure, you will most likely move onto a maintenance level. Which means very minimal costs, for lots of return. The benefits of this are tremendous to any business owner.

(if they’re still not convinced…)

5. The competitors are doing it, look…

One way to really get your elderly bosses blood boiling is show them the search results for your main keywords, and point out the competitors. They will instantly want to get it started.

Once He’s Convinced: Make sure you choose an old-skool-boss-friendly company -

This means simple, easy to read reports, excellent communication, quick wins and more importantly REMARKABLE RESULTS.

Old Skool Bosses love guarantees, and of course in SEO this is impossible, but make sure they have a 3 month trial, or some kind of structured bonus or moving retainer, based on results, traffic or sales.

We have 5 spaces for new clients open at the moment. If you’d like to convince your old school boss about us, feel free to get in touch and we’ll send you a pricing guide.

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Bright Assessing Winners of the Small Business of the Year 2012!

Joe Taylor — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:32:44 +0000

We though it would be great to tell you about one of our clients Bright Assessing winning the Small Business of the Year Award in the Pride of Stratford Awards 2012. We would just like to say a massive congratulations
to Bright and the team for achieving this award. It’s great to be a part of your marketing efforts.

More about Bright

Bright Assessing part of the Bright International Training Group specialise in delivering assessor, verifier and teacher training to the highest standards achievable to employers and colleges internationally. They help to develop your teaching career to ensure it’s a bright one. Bright Assessing are there every step of the way, right from your first day all the way through to the completion of your first candidate. Not only this they are there to help and support you all throughout your career.

Bright have become the UK’s leading Further Education training company always striving to be the best – a claim supported by their completion and retention rates which are up to 90% higher than the national average.

Bright also delivers other training services such as:

PTLLS, CTLLS & DTLLS training
NVQ Training
International Training
Soft Skills and Leadership Training

Like to know more about Bright Assessing? Then visit there website www.brightassessing.com

More about the Pride of Stratford Small Business of the Year Award

Every year Stratford District come together to celebrate the best achievements in business and the community for that year and this was no exception in 2012. Prestigious awards are presented to only the best businesses, individuals and organisations in the District.

Bright Assessing were voted and were the winners of the Small Business of the Year Award 2012. Judges were looking for a business that had a clear plan and ability to demonstrate the achievement of business objectives. Not only this the winning business must have a clear understanding of the needs of the customers and market. Bright Assessing shone through and ticked all the boxes and took the award at the end of the night.

The Stratford district has the largest number of small businesses in Warwickshire and the Council is well aware of the contribution small business makes to the local economy. The Pride of Stratford awards is an excellent idea and the Council is delighted to sponsor the Small Business of the Year category.Find out more about the Pride of Stratford Awards.

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The 4 Things To Look At When choosing the best SEO Company / Service for your business

Julian Salmon — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:24:29 +0000

What type of seo service is best for my business?

The answer to this question depends on many things such as in-house knowledge of SEO, and by knowledge I do not mean someone saying ‘I will have a go at that’ or even ‘Yes I can do that’ but someone in-house who has a proven track record of SEO achievements that show definitive highly ranked results in a competitive market on high traffic search terms, and secondly that they have the time available to spend on the promotion, unless you have these things available you will need to look at choosing a SEO company to help get you your ranking results.

Lets look at the other options available to you if you don’t have specialist knowledge in-house or insufficient time available to manage the campaign if you do.

1. Onsite seo package / service / software.

Onsite SEO consists of setting the site up so that when the search engines read the site they understand what search terms you are targeting with each of the pages, this also includes making the site as SEO ‘friendly’ as possible, by creating friendly url’s for example – the TEKnet ‘SEO’ page url is – www.teknet.org.uk/seo , we have named the page that to re-enforce the fact that that page is related to ‘seo’ the original page url was called – www.teknet.org.uk/pageid=&17 which is not relevant to the page content or search term we are targeting. The onsite seo is important to any promotion and has to re-enforce any offsite campaign but it is important to remember that onsite seo alone will not gain you rankings in a highly competitive market.

2. Offsite seo package / service / software

Offsite SEO consists of setting up links to a website based on the search terms that you are targeting, this is a crucial part of any campaign and how you build links is very important to the overall success of a campaign. Not all links add value, and where they come from also affects how much value they add to your page, as does how many other links are on the outbound page and how relevant the content is to the target search.
This is why you need to be very careful about SEO packages, services and software. With bronze, silver, gold packages for example, how do you know which ones will suite your requirement? They may show lists of links and articles etc but how many do you need to compete with your chosen search terms? It is very difficult or even impossible to understand the effectiveness of these types of packages without more information and knowledge to understand what you are trying to achieve and what needs to be done to catch up and overtake the sites already at the top of those searches.
The software solution is also fraught with danger because if you do not have enough base knowledge to understand SEO then no matter how good the software chances are the overall promotion will not work.

3. Linkbuilding

Again link building is another possible route to unsatisfactory results, unless the on-site seo is correct and you have analysed the requirement correctly to ensure that you don’t just catch up but overtake the highest ranked sites there is a possibility the link purchase may not work. You still need to factor in the different values of the links that you are generating in comparison to your competitors and any work that they are doing at the same time (A quick look only gives you a snapshot of that point in time and not how fast they are progressing) plus you also need to factor in the age of the results you are viewing at the time of comparison (Most analysis tools use old data for analysis).

I believe that link building services can be effective but only if you have advanced SEO skills, your on-site seo is up to speed and you know what your competitors are doing in detail.

4. Bespoke service

For most companies that do not have sufficient time or skills available in house I feel that a bespoke service is likely to get you the best results.

Bespoke services include all aspects of SEO, firstly making sure that you are targeting the correct search terms that will deliver traffic and results when you are visible, secondly they will ensure that the on-site SEO is all correct and also targeting the chosen search terms in the correct way, thirdly they will look at your competition on those terms and monitor them to ensure enough work is being done link building to both catch and overtake your competitors within the agreed timescales of the promotion.

TEKnet only offer bespoke service to our clients for exactly these reasons, after nearly 18 years in the industry I know that I cannot match every business requirement with 4 package types and even several promotions in the same field can be very different from one another, therefore the only way to gain measurable results for every client is to take every promotion as ‘different’ and create a bespoke tailored solution to give that client the best results possible for their budget within the agreed timescales.

To find out more about TEKnet’s bespoke approach to digital marketing please contact us today.

Julian Salmon
Managing Director
TEKnet

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SEO Website Scrappage Scheme – FREE Super Converting Website Re brand

Joe Taylor — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:18:49 +0000

FREE website re brand with every SEO campaign over £500 per month.

When we start any SEO campaign with any client we want to ensure your website is able to convert all of the traffic were going to be throwing your way! Which is why we have decided for JANUARY we will re brand, edit and tweak your current website to ensure everything is perfect to convert that much needed traffic into sales, clients and prospects for your business.

Take a look below at some simple changes we can make to help re brand your website!

Click image to enlarge

You can see on the above image that changing the logo, graphical banners, colour schemes and calls to action can make a hell of a difference between a good website and a GREAT one!

So if your looking to not only improve your visibility within the search engines but are also stuck for ideas on a website re brand for 2012 then let us help you! Lets help your customers find you and turn traffic into sales!

Joe Taylor
Digital Marketing Strategist
0845 8 388 488 EXT 407

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