SEO in Fife

If you've already had a site up and running for a while, you'll have tried to find it by searching on google, and depending on around 200 different factors, you'll have found your site somewhere in the search engine results pages, maybe where you'd like it to be, maybe not.

You've probably been approached by a bunch of SEO companies spamming you or calling you up and promising number 1 on google, or guaranteed top placing on google.

When that happens - you're probably wasting your time talking to them.  Any company that promises a top ranking on google without understanding your business, your current online competition or even which search keywords you should be trying to rank well for is selling you snake oil.  Try telling them you're starting up a business making breakfast cereal and will be happy to pay them once they beat Kellogg's for the keyword "cornflakes".

Because the whole area of search engine optimisation is shrouded in secrecy and nonsense, it's difficult to know what criteria to use when looking for assistance on improving your site's ranking for the keywords that'll bring you the best ROI - be that in terms of traffic, sales or leads.

Old tricks such as spamming links to your site across the internet or hiding keywords on a site, may get you a temporary boost on google, but will result in long-term penalisation once the algorithm picks up the technique.

So, you're considering some SEO in Fife?

But maybe you're unsure about what you need, so here's how to run a quick audit of your site before you get in touch.

1. Check the structure of your site - have you got a page for every core service or product you offer?  Google indexes pages, not sites, so if you're cramming all your services on to 1 page, you're diluting your chance of ranking well for any of the terms related to them.
Check out your competition's sites too.  Alongside structure, note the amount of text they have on each page - are they looking like an authority on each topic?

2. Run a search on google for your actual website address, prefacing the url with "site:" (e.g. http://www.mediachimps.co.uk )  Read the blue page titles and the descriptions that appear underneath each page.  How do they look?  Could they be selling your business better?  Getting a prospective customer to click on your site instead of a competitors is a vital first step of the conversion process. We're talking optimised copywriting here - descriptions, locations, keywords, calls to action.

3. Go and have a look at the google keyword tool. Try it out. Stick a couple of services in and do a search (don't bother adding a website address to the tool just yet).  Change the tick box on the bottom left to 'exact', and ensure the location is the UK.  Run your search and look at the statistics - local monthly searches tell you on average how many people type that specific term into google.co.uk on a monthly basis.  There are a few things to consider here - relevance can often be much more beneficial than high numbers, and the competition gives an indication of how many other people or companies are targeting those phrases (via paid advertising, but that's for another day).  When I looked at the tool for this page, I compared 'Fife SEO' (0 monthly searches) and 'SEO Fife' (16 monthly searches). Hence the related page title, meta description of this page on google and structurally important mentions of that particular phrase (check out our keyword research service for more on this).  I also have a couple of other well trusted sites linking to this page using that text.

4. Google made a major change to their algorithm in early 2011. (The tool that calculates which position a site gets for a specific search). Lots of rankings changed.  Companies that were doing well by 'farming' content when they noticed online interest in it, and then making money on the related advertising were penalised in the rankings.  Established sites that offered genuine expertise and insight got better rankings.  This algorithmic update, nicknamed 'Panda', marked a distinctive shift in the ability of google's search engine to understand language using 'latent semantic analysis'.  In brief, they're so good at understanding natural language patterns and the relationship between industry related terms, that they understand when the tone and overall content of a site is written by someone who knows what they're talking about.

So.  You can't get away with bullet points on your site anymore.  If you want to rank well, you'd better get writing original content that demonstrates your expertise. You need a page for every service, and you definitely need a site built on a content management system that lets you easily edit, add and update content yourself.

You should be keeping your site up to date (a blog or news page is ideal for this).  Every week, write about the work you've done, where you've done it, post pictures and videos, links to related information.  Your website needs to be the shop window that says - I am an expert on this topic, and I'm doing it now - here, have a look at how good I am.

Don't want to put that sort of effort in? That's fine - just be aware that if your competition does, they'll get the rankings.

Go and read this blog post (written just after the panda update),then come back!

To me, that's a checklist.  Google are saying, look, we want high quality sites - high quality sites are going to get the rankings, here's what we think a high quality site looks like.
You're not going to get much closer to straight from the horses mouth than that blog post.

Yes, it's probably going to take a bit more work, and regular attention, but as with any marketing tool - the more time you spend on it, the more it'll work.

As you blog or update your news page, you'll gradually build up a back catalogue of information. The time you wrote about servicing widgets in Kirkcaldy, matches the long, specific search of a potential customer who needs widgets serviced in Dunfermline.  He can read about your experience, see pictures of your work and see the success.  All those potential barriers to contact are removed.

So - there's a start. Do all that and you'll be in a good initial position.  There are plenty more things to consider, over 200 factors are involved in that algorithm I spend my days trying to unravel.  The number of other sites that link to yours is a signal of importance.  The text they use to link to you is important. (e.g. SEO in Fife ) Those links appear to be slowly becoming less important as social sharing's importance grows.  Are your facebook fans talking about your brand, liking your product or service. Liking that last update you posted, linking to the blog you wrote about those widgets you serviced in Dunfermline?

Think about it from Google's perspective - they need their search engine results to be relevant and interesting, or they lose users to their competition.  They can tell the relevance using language analysis, and the regular updates tell them that the site is refreshed often and likely to contain something new and of interest to potential visitors, a definite advantage over sites that are built and abandoned.

Conversion

Getting visitors to your site is half the battle, the other half is guiding them to the point where they buy or contact you, or reach whatever goal you set as the sign of a succesful visit.  Design and content play a massive part here, so it's a good thing we can design and build sites as well as optimise them.  This is an area which often gets a lot less attention than traffic generation, and in fact, many so called SEO companies will sacrifice the readability and flow of text in order to cram keywords in to the point where the content of the site is unreadable and isn't going to be selling anything despite the number of visitors landing on the page.  I spent 4 years studying marketing (at Napier in Edinburgh), and have worked in account management and sales roles, I have a good understanding of the principles of selling and marketing. It's important to ensure that the marketing strategy you use online is tailored for the information hungry internet savvy audience, and not just pasted from last year's brochure - again, I can help you out with that - this is a rich medium with a lot of untapped opportunity.

There's a bucketload more we can do if you really want to get the web working for your business the best it can and formulate a top notch digital marketing strategy.  Local search and places, article marketing, keyword research, facebook, twitter, linkedin, google+1, google analytics, webmaster tools, understanding your competitive landscape, email marketing, image optimisation, video optimisation, display advertising, press releases, link building strategies, reviews & forums, google base and pay per click to name just a few! The web is always changing, shifting, throwing up new opportunities, killing off the old ones.  It's a fascinating marketing arena, and one that we're well placed to help you in.

If you'd like to know more about targeting your local market online - read the google places guide, or for more information on how to structure the content of your site, visit the content and structure guide.

Or, if you'd like to discuss our SEO services, please get in touch.

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