We all know following recent Google updates like Penguin & Panda creating unique content has and will continue to become more and more important within any marketing campaign. The below are some simple steps you can take to ensure your content works for your audience.

1)      Who is your Audience

A lot of people create content knowing it’s needed to improve their results in the SREPS however not many people or agencies will take the time to work out who they are actually looking to target with the audience.

Creating content about Computers and then publishing it on a generic article site will not bring you as much interest as if you had posted that content on a more specialist website. Do your research and find out the ideal sites to post your content to include social networks.

This will give you the first step from here look into other industry experts and see what sort of content they are already sharing and try and make your content fit into the same criteria. If you’re stuck for a content topic look for questions being asked this might give you a starting point.

2)      Type of content

Find out what sort of content is read by your audience whether this is technical content or something easier to read. Knowing the type of content which is shared more by your audience will ensure you have a good chance of being able to match that of what the user needs.

There are various types of content you could make to engage with your users from Technical Content, White Papers, Videos, Images or even real life examples or reviews. As long as you can find the best content you will have a good chance of being able to make a good impact on your audience and have your content shared.

3)      Be yourself

The most important thing about content creation is having a personality and being creative. Try and create a unique layout for your post whether this includes images or videos or even various sub headings making your content suit you is important and will ensure you have a unique personality.

Make your content genuine, research topics and find the facts whatever you do when creating content try never to sell it will simply make you look false and will break and reputation and bond you have built with your customers.

Try and create a writing style your comfortable with this will make you stand out from other writers within your industry and will give you a better chance of been seen over other competitors.

4)      Find answers to problems

If you’re having trouble finding topics to blog about then think about looking for problems people have and then try and create an in-depth answer to their problem, this will mean they are more likely to share your blog again in the future and it will also mean you probably will get a link from that company or person which is even better.

5)      Finding the facts

Including facts within your article which will ensure you have credible data to back up anything you’re trying to get across to the user.  The best place to find genuine reliable facts is usually Government based websites or in fact news sites although this has become less credible over the last few years.

6)      Engage

This is one of the most important factors of creating content these days allowing your users to engage and socially share your content, simply add some social networking icons to your content and allow your users to make comments this will ensure you have the best chance of getting your content shared and talked about.

7)      Check & Check again

The most important thing about content creation is to check your work although nothing can be perfect having content which is free from typo’s and spelling errors can be a huge benefits especially from Google’s point of view.

Remember creating content should be fun and your users want to get in on the action so try and add images and other media tools to keep things fun and fresh.  This is my current round up of simple tips to help you create compelling content which will get your content shared around the web.

Method 1: Ask for a Link

Running an online website can have some benefits one of these is the function to send out sign up activations and newsletters. Get to the point why not ask for a link from people who have signed up to your newsletter or activated an account on your website?

They like your content and your website or they wouldn’t have signed up so now it’s time to ask for a link, when sending out an email just ask if they would like back to you or share you with their customers. It really is that simple and that basic yet so many people have never tried this method.

Method 2: Broken Content Link Building

This might sound strange but bare with me, start by taking a list of say 5-10 blogs which you know are ranking for your chosen keywords. You want to make sure the blog has some authority and some sort of audience no matter how small or large.

Now take your results into Screaming Frog, you’re looking to see if there are any broken links within the blogs you have found. Start to put all of the broken links into a Spreadsheet as this will give you the first step for this method.

Following on from this you will want to sort the broken links by page authority so you can see which pages are more important for you to focus your efforts onto.  Now take the URL and place it into a site called Way Back Machine, this site will show you what previously was shown on the domain.  The idea is to re-create the blog post or content which has since been lost and make it more compelling and interactive with the user.

Finally once you have created all of your new content and added images and videos you can post it out to various social media websites and email everyone linking to the old broken URL and see if they will change the URL to point to your new post.

The process can take quite a long time but can be very effective in trying to create something your completion doesn’t have.

Method 3: Interviews

Now this isn’t something new however it is becoming more important and I am increasingly finding myself reading interviews which include industry figures. Research into figures who you think are influential around the industry and contact them to see if you could conduct an interview.

Think about it carefully and choose a range of questions which will not only help you learn and develop your skills but also help other people in the same industry as you, this in turn will hopefully result in a link from them to your interview.

Method 4: Data Visualisation

I love reading new industry news and topics, however time can be tight sometimes and I find it easier to read information through images and videos. This should be something you should look into whether its videos or images or even infographics create something which can tell a story and is creative. I guarantee it will get linked to and shared around social networks with little push from you.

Method 5: Frequently Asked Questions

This is done by most websites, but what happens when you still have a question you need answering and it’s not supplied?  Well if you’re like me you will simple Google the question and this is where you could be earning some great links.

Look around the web find some questions relating to your industry and then answer them in-depth via your blog, go back and tell the user what you have done and the rest will work itself out. This can be a really powerful way to build links while creating new relationships with potential customers.

Summary

I realise not all of the above tips are new to some people however these are listed because I have found them useful within the last month on various SEO campaigns I have been working on.  I would love to hear any other suggestions you might have or even if you would like some more information on the methods listed above.

If you are un-sure about how some of the ideas work please consultant a professional developer who will be able to give you more advice.

• Use 301s: If you’ve restructured your site, use 301 redirects (“RedirectPermanent”) in your .htaccess file to smartly redirect users, Googlebot, and other spiders. (In Apache, you can do this with an .htaccess file; in IIS, you can do this through the administrative console.)
• Be consistent: Try to keep your internal linking consistent. For example, don’t link to http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page and http://www.example.com/page/index.htm.
• Use top-level domains: To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top-level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We’re more likely to know that http://www.example.de contains Germany-focused content, for instance, than http://www.example.com/de or http://de.example.com.
• Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.
• Use Webmaster Tools to tell us how you prefer your site to be indexed: You can tell Google your preferred domain (for example, http://www.example.com or http://example.com).
• Minimize boilerplate repetition: For instance, instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details. In addition, you can use the Parameter Handling tool to specify how you would like Google to treat URL parameters.
• Avoid publishing stubs: Users don’t like seeing “empty” pages, so avoid placeholders where possible. For example, don’t publish pages for which you don’t yet have real content. If you do create placeholder pages, use the noindex meta tag to block these pages from being indexed.
• Understand your content management system: Make sure you’re familiar with how content is displayed on your web site. Blogs, forums, and related systems often show the same content in multiple formats. For example, a blog entry may appear on the home page of a blog, in an archive page, and in a page of other entries with the same label.
• Minimize similar content: If you have many pages that are similar, consider expanding each page or consolidating the pages into one. For instance, if you have a travel site with separate pages for two cities, but the same information on both pages, you could either merge the pages into one page about both cities or you could expand each page to contain unique content about each city.

Don’t block Google from duplicate content. Google advises against this, because it won’t be able to detect when URLs point to the same content, and will have to treat them as separate pages. Use the canonical link element (rel=”canonical”).

Note: there are reasons why Google might skip your Canonical link elements.

Matt Cutts from Google made a small statement which as you can imagine pretty much states they won’t give too much information away, which is what we knew anyway.

 “While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics,”

The penguin update is aimed to help target websites which continue to break the Google Guidelines, these sites will always be at the top of the list for Google to target. Breaking the Google guidelines has never being something new and loads of websites still think it is ok to continue to break these rules.

From keyword stuffing to link farms any sort of SEO technique which is not in Google’s guidelines will see you receive a hit from the new penguin update. SEO has always and will continue to be about quality not quantity, if you have being doing some Grey/Black SEO techniques then now is the time to change your ways and try and combat the Penguin update.

We know from a recent article that the main areas that the penguin update will target have been –

• Cloaked Pages
• Low Quality Links
• Hidden Text & Links
• Keyword Stuffing

However the list can go on and go and as the rollout only happened on Tuesday you can be sure more issues will come to light over the coming weeks/months.

One thing is very clear though if you want to stay on the good side of Google and avoid getting your happy feet taken away then create creative, unique and fun content which will get shared socially. Steer clear of duplicate content on multiple domains/Pages or sub domains.

Duplicate Content has being the biggest target of the Penguin update and now Google has even released some useful tips to help you address these issues and help reduce the risk of your website being penalised.

So has the Penguin update made me change the way I do SEO? No I have and always will continue to offer white hat SEO services around the Cheltenham area, building relevant and unique content is only half the battle when it comes to SEO and in my eyes if you try and cheat your way around Google your soon be wishing you hadn’t.

Please let me know if I have missed anything

Short/Direct keywords –These keywords usually have a lot of traffic but might not convert much as they are not what is more commonly known as a sales keyword. People searching for say “cars” might be looking for anything and might not want a car.

Long Tail keywords – These keywords are better for converting traffic and usually a lot easy to target as they have smaller monthly traffic, these sort of keywords tend to be over three words long for example “ Honda Jazz for Sale Cheltenham” this could be a good converting keyword for a Honda Garage.

It is always good to have some direct keywords and some long tail keywords within your list as this will help you get a good range of traffic for your website and will ensure you have the best chances of converting traffic and making sales for your website.

Before you go out and make a list of thousands of keywords you need to ensure your site can answer there question to ensure you close the sale this can be a difficult thing to ensure but is very important as this will also help reduce your bounce rate.

In a recent study it has being shown that over 65% of all search queries that come into any given website are long tail and less than 30% come from short tail keywords, surprisingly a lot of people still believe that short tail keywords is where the money is.  To begin developing your keyword list you will need to have at least half a day spare and you will need to have some basic tools which I use, these tools are all free and will help your keyword list grow.

The basic tools which will help you develop a good keyword list which generates high value keywords are as follows –

• Google Alerts
• Google Insights
• Google Trends
• Google Adword Keyword Tool

These are all free tools but it can be more beneficial if you an account with Google as this will allow a more detailed list.

Firstly start by making a small list of what you believe your website is about for example “SEO” this will give you a good starting  point and allow you to do some research based on these keywords, now you have your small list copy and pat it into Google Adwords Keyword Tool this should now return a range of suggestions which will increase your keyword list dramatically.

Now the hard work you have a list of say 100+ keyword suggestions which you believe would be perfect for your website, well hold on speedy because its not over yet, to be in with a good chance of ranking for some high value keywords you will need to also ensure there are not too many competitors also ranking for that keyword so begin by taking your list and placing it into adwords.

We are looking for keywords which have no more than say 30,000 competing websites in that sector this will ensure you have a good chance of being able to target these keywords effectively. Once this has being done we will have a strong keyword list which will allow us to make on page SEO changes and create some strong content which targets those keywords.

The end result really is to have a strong list of about 15-20 keywords and then a list which are still valuable but are more long tail this is the key to ensure you have a good chance of making your website make a good ROI for you.

If you have any questions please just ask and I will do my best to offer some advice, I also found the below video to be very useful when looking to conduct Keyword Research.

Please keep in mind there is no quick fix when it comes to SEO and nothing will see you have an instant page 1 result it takes time, effort and a lot of hard work.

1)      Title Tags

This is a simple step which anyone can take to not only improve your changes with search engines but also to help the visitor know the page they are on.  The title tag is the main thing which lets users and engines know what the page is about.

Tip – Ensure you keep the tag relevant to your page and the content

Avoid – Try and avoid using title tags which have no relation to your page or post, also try to be information about your page ensure the tag is not too vague and it adds some real value to the user.

Stuffing your title tag or making it to long can also be things you should look to avoid.

2)      Meta Description

This might be something a lot of you have already used and something the more advance user might not think is applicable however not one aspect of SEO is going to complete your campaign you need 100 little pieces to complete the puzzle.

Tip – Again this is pretty obvious but keep the description relevant to the page in essence you should be trying to give a small excerpt of the page. Feel free to add keywords but don’t make the tag spam.

Avoid – Try and avoid using duplicate tags throughout your website and un-related keywords which are not used elsewhere on the page.

3)      Site URL Structure

This is a little more in depth and probably something you should have your designer look into depending on how advance you are. The URLS used on your site should always be relevant and try to contain keywords this is still a relevant factor for search engines.

Tip – While developing your URL structure think about making it relevant like before, always make it easy to understand from both a user and search engine point of view this again will help you in the long run.

Try and keep all your URLS in lower case as this is what most visitors will expect.

Avoid – Lengthy URLS there just hard to read and remember so try and keep it short and relevant, never give your URL a simple un-related name.  Keywords are also a must in URLS but again try not to overdo it by using to many.

4)      Navigation

This is something which I find frustrating on a range of websites, I have and always live by the rule of 3 clicks deep, this simply means a user should be able to get to the page within 3 clicks and get back to the home page again within 3 clicks.

Tip – Plan, if you plan then you will not fail at a good site making the process easy for the user is the most important thing.

Avoid – Stay away from adding 100’s of smaller more detailed pages the more information on one page the better, it’s about balance a good amount of content is better than something to weak. Find that happy medium.

5)      Sitemaps

Something not everyone agrees with but if you have a sitemap at least your allowing the visitor to have a 2^nd chance at finding that page they might not of found earlier on using your navigation, it’s also a key aspect for search engines and allows them to easily navigate throughout your website.

Tip- IF you are using a CMS like WordPress then you will be easily able to create a simple Sitemap

6)      Whoops

The more technical term is a 404 page but no one likes a boring term, the same should be taken into consideration when making a 4040 page. Try and make the page useful even if it’s never seen this will ensure that if a user ever finds your error page that they can benefit from it in some way shape or form.

7)      Internal linking

Linking throughout your website is a must for you to be able to show people what is important throughout your website; this is more commonly known as anchor text and is when you use keywords to link to other pages within your website.

Tip – Keep all anchor texts relevant and about the page you are linking to, think about the keywords you are going to use.

Avoid – Try not to overdo it, Google are now playing more notice of people using excessive anchor text so try to keep it relevant and don’t use the same keyword over and over again.

8)      Images

Images will be used throughout your website to showcase products and members of staff, much like text you can optimise your images for search engines so be sure you look into this and the benefits it could give you.

Tip – Try to give your entire images useful file names which describe the picture or logo itself if possible try and add a keyword or two again this will help.

Avoid – As everything else in SEO there are certain things you should make sure you avoid these include using generic names for pictures or long names or simply using keywords this again will not work or help your SEO campaign.

9)      Heading Tags

Heading tags are of vital importance on your on page SEO work so you need to make sure you follow the crowd on this one adding H1, 2 3 and so on. The better H tags you have throughout your site the better chances you have of Search engines understanding what keywords are important throughout your website.

Tip – Think about your headings properly and use clear and information tags which will reflect the page and chosen keywords. Only add heading tags if it makes sense to and doesn’t make the page look odd and un-natural.

Avoid – Falling in the heading tag trap can be a dangerous thing so try to avoid adding headings where it doesn’t make sense to and where it makes the structure of the page look strange. Try not to have too much text within a heading tag this again will not help your war on SEO.

10)   Back links

We have all heard the hype over the years about links being the key thing for any website and well it’s true the more quality and relevant back links you have the better. Forget the boring things like directories you need to be thinking outside the box and doing something no one else is doing or create some sort of amazing link bait which will get your content shared.

Tip – Try and incorporate a range of online marketing tools to help boost exposure of your brand and company website this could include sending out various social media messages to pushing messages via email campaigns.

Avoid – Try and avoid being the same as every other website in the world this means don’t go after simple and low quality directory listings, avoid adding spammy links everywhere you can this will only have a negative effect on your SEO campaign.

These are 10 simple things I believe any website owner can do and do to a high standard, SEO for me has always being about creating useful content, videos and much more which will help solve a problem or provide information to your customer. This isn’t hard and should be a standard policy but it amazes me as to how many people still build poor content hoping for good rankings.

It’s become easier for you to create gauging conversations between your customers and you so make use of these outlets and start building relationships which could lead to sales within the future.

Please if you have any questions then get in touch I am more than happy  to provide some free advice on SEO for your website and how it can improve sales.

Creating a blog sadly isn’t enough anymore with a lot of companies having various blogs around the web you need to think outside the blog when it comes to content and ideally do something no one else has done which I know can be a difficult task.

Only ever invest in blogging if you can spare the time and make a real difference your need to be able to create useful content which will get users interested this will in turn help as they will be more likely to share content on social media websites which as you might know now play a small part when it comes to getting your website ranked in search engines.

Remember the first few months when you where looking to launch your website and you did a range of market research to find the best keywords and terms to use around your website to bring in customers well a blog should be done the same with a lot of time and research up front in to the types of keywords and phrases you would like to target using your blogs content.

Think about your keywords and then just like before conduct some market research to find out about the traffic they might bring to your blog this will help give you some goals and ensure you have the best chance of creating content which will get seen and shared across social outlets.

Tip – Think about something new and unique like a new tool in your industry or some amazing research which will be viewed by millions something out of the ordinary will usually give you a head start about others on the web.

Firstly for me I think BING will become a much bigger player within the coming years as Google keeps making small mistakes and looses small market share I feel Bing will make a play and take a large section of the market and start to become the new Google. I personally think by 2015 Bing will be the biggest search engine and Google will have a much smaller market share.

The next thing I think will become is important and always has being is content, I think over the next coming months content will become more and more important forcing more and more people to learn the industry more and find out more about the content and products they are writing about.

A lot of people talk about content like it is a new feature in SEO however for me it has always being about providing users with relevant and useful content or products which will help solve or improve a problem.

I believe in the past, I have got a funny feeling that META description tags could play a bigger part in SEO over the coming years and this will mean a lot of sites will again have to review all the tags they have in place.

I have a small feeling that social metrics and networks are going to become something you can no longer avoid and you have to be on these sites. I think social sites will become something every company has to have to be able to compete in Google & Bing effectively.

Multi Platform SEO this for me is going to be the biggest change over the next 6 months with more and more people including myself having to learn how to effectively optimise a website for mobile and tablet devices to ensure you can target all markets.

The final thing I believe is going to become more important is links, although it has always been very important I think that times are changing and now it could be much more beneficial to have 1 high quality backlink which is relevant than 50 lower links I think this metric is going to change the way link building is carried out.