The SEO industry is one that is constantly evolving – thanks, mostly, to Google’s sporadic algorithm updates – but despite its changes, in both practice and reputation, it’s still an essential part of any digital strategy. Research shows that the first result in Google will receive 36.4% of all the clicks, so if you reach the number one spot, you will capture over a third of the potential audience automatically.

However, reaching that coveted position is not always an easy task. The days of excessive backlinks and keyword stuffing are long gone, and have been replaced by a requirement for genuinely helpful, high quality content. Most companies are already using blogging, email marketing, social media, and many other text and image based mediums to provide this – but what many do not realise is that video can help with SEO too.

YouTube is now the second biggest search engine in the world; it has more than 1 billion unique users each month and in 2011, had around 140 views for every person on earth. Google has even started including ‘rich snippets’ – information about videos that are available on particular pages – in their organic search results – and embedding video into your company homepage is therefore, unsurprisingly, a great idea for SEO. In fact, used properly, video can increase your chances of achieving a front-page Google result by a staggering 53x.

If your business is looking for SEO assistance and hasn’t yet considered video, now is a very good time to start!

SEO link building is becoming more and more controversial, as Google continually updates its algorithm to weed out anybody that’s not playing the rules. Nowadays, stuffing random links in to websites and articles could get you into a lot of trouble – instead, you have to make the effort to build links in a genuine way that will add value for your users. If you need to boost your site ranking, but want to stay in Google’s good books, here are useful three ways to build your link profile without veering into black hat SEO territory.

Write a guest blog

Inbound links are a great source of SEO assistance, but they have to be created carefully in order to avoid any implications of spam. Writing guest blogs is a legitimate, helpful way of providing useful information for external readers and giving your own site a little boost – plus, it allows you to show off your expertise to a whole new audience and be seen as a thought leader in your industry.

Share on social media

If you write a blog, an article or other piece of genuinely useful content, try sharing a link to it on your social media sites. ‘Social signals’, as Google calls them, are becoming increasingly important for any business that wants to rank well, so sharing your work keeps your profile active and adds a helpful link to your portfolio at the same time.

Create an infographic

Infographics are all the rage nowadays – they’re a great way of imparting a lot of key stats in a fun, engaging way. You can use your own research or culminate interesting stats from other sources (giving full credit to the original creator, of course). Not only are infographics a useful point of contact for your user, they also tend to get pretty good press – and if another company covers your work, you’ll gain links (and hopefully new fans and followers too!)

As a familiar household name and a company that’s been trading for more than 90 years, Interflora is probably one of the last companies you’d expect to be breaching Google’s rules in the hopes of improving their SEO. However, news broke last week that Interflora has been using links from a significant number of ‘advertorials’ to boost their standing in the SERPS, without using a ‘no follow’ tag – which is a strict no-no in the SEO world.

“In January, Interflora, in order to get ready for Valentine’s Day, paid newspapers to run stories which were only there to get links to improve their Google ranking,” David Naylor, head of SEO at Bronco, explained in an interview with Computer Weekly. “In SEO terms, advertorials are like gold dust, but have to be taken with care. Interflora went and did as many as humanly possible, and they really went too far.”

Although the punishment of Interflora is likely to be temporary, it still teaches other businesses an important lesson about the importance of conducting their SEO campaigns in a responsible manner. To keep your SEO campaign in Google’s good books, make sure that you:

• Approach advertorials with caution
  Google is bound to be keeping an eye on them, so keep advertorials to a minimum and don’t be tempted to pay for the removal of the ‘no follow’ on your back-link. 
• Keep link building above board
• Focus on building links from genuine, credible sources – for instance, by writing a guest blog for a site in your industry. 
• Prioritise quality content 
• As the saying goes, ‘content is king’ when it comes to the Google search results, so creating high quality, user friendly content that people naturally want to link to, is the key to SEO success. 

In the end, Google ended up not only penalising Interflora, but also the newspaper that ran the advertorials, demonstrating just how seriously they take such breaches of SEO best practice.

To most people, Google is the definitive search engine. It’s even become ingrained in our day to day vocabulary – most of us barely go a day without using it as a verb (“I’ll just google it!”) and it’s even listed as such in the Oxford English Dictionary.

However, new figures from Experian Hitwise indicate that Google could be losing its iron clad grip on the search engine market, as its market share dropped below 90% for the second month in a row. Google’s share of the search market is now 88%, and whilst this means that it is still dominating a significant percentage of searches, this is its lowest point for five years.

The news comes just days after social media platform Facebook announced the launch of its very own search engine, a “graph” system based on natural searches of information shared between users. Although Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was quick to explain that their new offering isn’t intended to challenge Google – “We’re not indexing the web…We’re indexing our map of the graph” – it will almost certainly make a difference to the way consumers search for information.

It seems that the shape of search is changing; whilst Google is still top dog at the moment, Experian Hitwise’s statistics suggest other sites like Microsoft and Yahoo! are beginning to claw their way back. It will be interesting to see what impact this has on SEO – particularly if social sites continue to enter the search market too.

It’s that time of year again! New Year’s resolutions aren’t just for the home – they can be a great motivational tool in the office as well. The beginning of January is the perfect time to make a fresh start with your digital marketing campaign, so here are a few ideas to get you started.

Give your website a makeover

Your website is the online shop front for your business, so it’s important to keep it looking fresh, innovative and up to date. 2012 was the year that mobile search took off, so your first port of call should be to make sure your site is equally appealing on all platforms (check out our blog piece about responsive web design to find out more!) Even if you had your website redesigned recently, there are still ways that you can improve it – for instance, you could consider adding a blog or Twitter feed to keep the page active and interesting.

Revamp your social media

If your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn profile has looked the same for months on end, why not make a change? Something as simple as a new cover photo or sparky new ‘About’ section could give you the edge over competitors who leave their pages static. Whilst you’re at it, why not try a new social media site? Relative newcomers such as Pinterest and Instagram could have a big impact on the visual aspect of your marketing strategy – just make sure you set aside enough time to update them frequently.

Make a schedule

Speaking of organising your time, there’s no better way to keep on top of your updates than with a clear cut content schedule. Plan when you’re going to post social media statuses, tweets, blog articles etc and find a way to make it happen alongside your daily workload. Social signals are becoming increasingly important for SEO as well as brand awareness, so investing a small amount of time in your planning could lead to big rewards as the year goes on.

It’s almost Christmas and here at NS Design, we’re feeling festive, so we’ve put together this guide to the three ‘kings’ of digital marketing throughout 2012. These key players were crucial considerations for digital marketing industry this year, and altered the overall marketing landscape in a variety of notable ways…

1. Content
   Thanks to Google’s now legendary ‘Penguin’ update back in April, content marketing has experienced a massive boost over the last twelve months as the online world turned its focus onto quality, user friendly copy. The Content Marketing Institute’s annual Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report revealed that 91% of B2B marketers now use content marketing, and more than half intend to increase their content marketing budgets over the coming year, suggesting that this type of marketing is destined for further growth in 2013.
2. Social Media
   Social media is now an unavoidable necessity for every single business. Facebook is still the most popular social network, with more than a billion users worldwide, but 2012 also saw the increase in popularity of visual based platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. 50% of people now follow brands on social media – a number which is likely to increase throughout 2013 and beyond, particularly if content marketing continues to flourish.
3. SEO 
   SEO in particular experienced something of a transformation throughout 2012. The staple techniques of black hat SEO – article spam, keyword overloading and link spam – have been rendered useless by Google’s crackdown on poor quality content. Instead, white hat SEO has stolen the crown, and its focus on user friendly, high quality content intrinsically links the medium with content and social media marketing.

What 2012 has shown us is that these three ‘kings’ cannot rule independently of each other: the crossover between content, social media and SEO means that businesses need to tie all three disciplines together into a coherent digital marketing strategy. All the signs point to this becoming even more crucial in 2013.

By now, you should know that SEO is a crucial part of any digital marketing campaign – but it’s not easy to implement, and many companies often find their enthusiasm waning from time to time. If you’re in need of some SEO inspiration, look no further than these staggering stats – you’ll want to get back to work straight away!

1. 70-80% of users ignore paid ads and focus on organic results
This figure, which comes from an eye tracking survey conducted by UserCentric, shows paid ads and SEO need to work in unison to attract the widest possible range of users. During the 2011 study, Usercentric allowed experienced Internet users access to both Bing and Google, and found that they spent longer looking at organic search results than paid alternatives. This shows that your business should be focusing on organic SEO as well, even if you have paid ads in the pipeline.

2. 42% of seach users click the top ranking link
This article from Instrapin shows highlights the importance of aiming for the top spot when it comes to SEO. Almost half of users will click the top link of a page of search results – the more effective your SEO campaign, the more likely you are to make it to the top.

3. SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads have just 1.7%
It’s all well and good focusing on web rankings and increases in traffic, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, businesses want sales. This stat, from Search Engine Journal, shows that 14.6% of SEO leads convert to a deal, compared with just 1.7% of outbound leads (e.g. those gained from ‘outbound’ marketing such as cold calling). Suddenly, working on your SEO efforts doesn’t seem like such a chore, does it?

If you’re one of the many companies trying to climb the SERPs ladder, you may have wondered why Google doesn’t provide a tool which allows you to calculate whether you’re going in the right direction. Whilst Google Analytics is a useful program, many people question why there isn’t a straightforward tool that will enable you to measure the success of your SEO campaign.

In fact, so many people have pondered this point that everybody’s favourite SEO expert, Matt Cutts, has addressed the issue in a recent online video post. He highlights the functions that Google already offers, such as their Webmaster tools and notifications, and then addresses the issue with a cautionary tale:

“Back in the early days, InfoSeek would actually let you submit a page, see immediately where it was ranking, and let you submit another page, and there are stories that have lasted since then about how people would just spend their entire day spamming InfoSeek, tweaking every single little thing until they got exactly the right template that would work to rank number one. So we don’t want to encourage that kind of experimentation.”

He then goes on to explain the balance that the search engine is trying to hit: “What we do want to provide is a lot of useful tools for people that are doing it themselves … we don’t want to make it easy for the spammers, but we do want to make it as easy as possible for everyone else,” Cutts explained. “There’s inherently a tension there, and we’re always trying to find the features that will help regular people while not just making it easy to spam Google.”

What features would you like to see Google produce to help with SEO?

SEO is one of the most integral parts of any digital marketing campaign, but with so many breakthroughs and developments happening in the industry, it can be difficult to keep up with all of the terminology. Luckily we’ve put together this jargon buster, to help you make sense of the terms you need to know.

Algorithm – Usually mentioned in reference to Google, an algorithm is a system used by search engines to select the chosen pages for a particular search term or phrase.

Back link – As simple as it sounds, a back link is any link which comes to your site from any other page.

Black hat – Black hat SEO essentially means negative SEO techniques, which can involve anything from link spamming to keyword stuffing.

Keyword – A keyword is any word or phrase that a web user searches for. You can target your campaign so that your page shows up for particular phrases.

Metatag – Information about a page, which is shown on SERPs but not always on the site. The statements are used by search engines to determine the focus of the website.

ROI – An abbreviation of return on investment, or the measurement of the success of a campaign.

SERPs – An abbreviation of search engine results pages, SERPs refers to the order that search results appear.

White hat – The opposite of black hat SEO, white hat SEO means the use of positive SEO techniques, such as content marketing and link building.

Every company wants more hits on their website, but getting those hits is not an easy task. Increasing your web traffic is an ongoing process, and there’s no quick fix or magic formula to draw visitors to your site.

However, there are things you can do to encourage clients, searchers or followers to visit your page. The combination of our three top tips will give you a good chance of increasing your web traffic – give them a try and see if they work for you.

1. Work on your SEO strategy

Good search engine optimization (SEO) involves focusing on quality content and specific keywords, to get these pages ranked more highly in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract back-links – if you’re not sure how to develop positive SEO techniques, our article 6 steps to improving your SEO strategy could help.

2. Share links on social media platforms

If you’ve uploaded a fresh piece of content or posted a new blog, let your target demographic know about it! Posting a link to your page in a status update or tweet encourages your followers to visit your site, increasing engagement and traffic simultaneously. Make sure your readers can easily share your content by installing ‘tweet’ and ‘like’ buttons for Twitter and Facebook respectively.

3. Make your website easy to navigate

When people visit your website, the last thing you want is for them to leave because they can’t find what they’re looking for. Good web design is essential – make your website clear, straightforward and easy to use. Not only will existing visitors be likely to spend longer on your well structured page, they’re also more likely to recommend it to others, therefore increasing your traffic even further!