Today, we would like to share with you 8 SEO tips to rank your website on page #1 of Google. The number 8 is highly symbolic in Asian society. In the chinese community, 8 stands for ‘fa’ or ‘huat’ which means to prosper and to grow rich. In similar context, by following these 8 SEO tips, you can be sure of a high rank in Google Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) which I’m sure will bring you more money. (either directly or indirectly)

Basic search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental and crucial to every business, every website.  SEO will help you position your website properly so as to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people really need your site.

So, what are search engines like Google and Yahoo looking for? How can you build your website in a way that will please both your web visitors/clients, as well as Google, Yahoo, and other search engines? Most importantly, how can SEO help your web presence become more profitable?

1. Your website=Awfully Chocolate Cake? Well… similar we would say.

Your Website is similar to a cake

Your links, both paid and unpaid search, as well as social media (Facebook, Twitter) acts as the icing on the cake. Your content, information architecture, content management system (PHP, Joomla, Magento, WordPress), and infrastructure act as the sugar and makes the cake. Without it, your cake is tasteless, boring, and gets thrown in the trash.

2. What is Google (Search engines) looking for?

Search engines like Google and Yahoo want to do their jobs as best as possible by referring their users to websites and content that is the most relevant to what the user is looking for. Simple and straightforward right? So how is relevancy then determined?

Content: Is determined by the theme that is being given, the text (H1, Title, Alt txt) on the page, and the titles and descriptions that are given.

User Experience: How does your website look like? Is it easy to navigate around? Does it look safe (SSL)? Does it have a high bounce rate? What are the historical clickthrough rate on your website from the SERPs versus the average time spent on site? All these are questions that a good Internet Marketing company will ask for when they work on your campaign.

Performance: How fast is your site and does it work properly? Is the server based in some obscure places like Malaysia or China versus Singapore?

Authority: Does your website have good enough content to link to or do other authoritative sites use your website as a reference or cite the information that’s available? Think of websites such as Wikipedia or Squidoo. Is your site the authority in your field? Or how can you try to be this authoritative source?

3. Nope, Google is not looking for the below:

Search engine spiders (especially those of Google) only have a certain amount of data storage. Hence, if you’re performing shady tactics or trying to trick them (Black Hat SEO), chances are you’re going to hurt yourself in the long run. Items the search engines don’t want are:

Poor User Experience: Make it easy for the user to get around. Too many ads or shady wordings that disguises themselves as actual text and making it too difficult for people to find content they’re looking for will only increase your bounce rate. If you know your bounce rate it will help determine other information about your site. For example, if it’s 80 percent or higher and you have content on your website, chances are something is wrong.

Purchased Links: Buying links will get you nowhere when it comes to SEO. Enough has been said about this topic so we will not go too deep into this topic.

Keyword Stuffing: Overuse of keywords on your pages. Do you know what is the optimal percentages of text to be used in your site vis-a-vis your competitors? Or are you just guessing and wildly repeatedly using those keywords on your site?

4. Know Your Business Model

While this is pretty obvious, so many people tend to not sit down and just focus on what their main goals are. Below are some things you ought to ask yourself when you’re running your business.

1) What is a conversion? Someone who registers on your blog? Someone who sents you an enquiry via the online form? Or someone who has just checkout on your shopping cart?

2) What are your short and long term goals? Are you looking to hit 10,000 unique visitors a month and to hit 20,000 page views from the 3rd month onwards? Are you periodically reaching your goals every month? What is the next step after reaching your goals?

3) What are your assets and liabilities? Nope, this blog is not an accounting lesson but as a businessman, you really need to know which product is really bringing in the bacon for you.

4) Eyeballs (impressions) or Clicks? Which is more important?

5. Don’t Forget to Optimize for Multi-Channels

Keyword strategy is not only important to implement on-site, but should extend to other off-site platforms. Over at iClick Media, we are always thinking about multi-channel optimization. These multi-channel platforms include:

- Social Bookmarking Sites

- Facebook

- Email Marketing

- Forum Posting

- etc

multichannel optimization

Do you know which site/strategy is best used for your industry? Being consistent with keyword phrases within these platforms will not only help your branding efforts, but also train users to use specific phrases you’re optimizing for.

6. Be Consistent With Domain Names

Domain naming is so important to your overall foundation, so as a best practice you’re better off using sub-directory root domains (abc.com/awesome) versus sub-domains (awesome.abc.com).

If you’re not sure how you should meddle with those examples, its best that you leave it to the professionals like us.

7. Optimizing for Different Types of Results

In addition to optimizing for the desktop/laptop experience/version, make sure to focus on mobile and tablet optimization as well as other media. You never know how and when your clients will access the different touch points of your business.

8. Focus on Your Meta Data Too

Your content on your site should have title tags and meta keywords descriptions.

• Meta keywords are pretty much ignored by search engines nowadays, but if you still use them, make sure it talks specifically to that page and that it is also formatted correctly. Do not repeat your meta keywords for every page. I repeat. Do not repeat your meta keywords for every page.
• Your meta description should be unique and also speak to that specific page. Duplicate meta descriptions from page to page will not get you anywhere.

Title tags should also be unique! Think your title as a 4-8 word ad, so do your best to entice the reader so they want to click and read more.

Summary

Skipping the basics of SEO will only leave your site’s foundation a mess and prevent you from fully maximizing revenue opportunities. iClick Media has always been at the forefront of technology. If you need help on SEO, just give us a ring at 6362 0123!

To paraphrase Google’s web spam lead – Matt Cutts, the algorithm filter will have a “next generation” coming and that undeniably will have a major impact on the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).

Having watched the initial rollout take many by surprise it make sense this time to at least attempt to prepare for what may be lurking around the corner.

What iClick Media knows about Google Penguin?

We know that the Google Penguin is essentially a link quality filter that sits on top of the search engine results page’s core algorithm. It runs sporadically (the last official update was in October 2012), and is designed to take out websites that uses manipulative (or black hat SEO) techniques to improve their customers’ search visibility.

While there have been many examples of this being badly executed (just google for “BMW SEO Ban” or “JC Penney SEO Penalise”), with lots of site owners and SEO professionals complaining of injustice, it is clear that the Google web spam engineers have collected a lot of information over recent months and have improved results in many different verticals.

What this means is that Google’s team is now on top of the existing data pile and testing output and as a result they are hungry for a major structural change to the way the filter works once again. To all clients who are managing their own SEO – beware!

We know that months of manual resubmissions and disavows have helped the Silicon Valley giant collect an unprecedented amount of data about the “bad neighborhoods” of links that had powered rankings until very recently, for thousands of high profile sites.

They have even been involved in specific and high profile web spam actions against sites like Interflora, working closely with internal teams to understand where links came from and watch closely as they were removed.

In short, Google’s new data pot makes most big data projects look like a school project! All the signs therefore point towards something much more intelligent and all encompassing.

The question is how can you profile your links and understand the probability of being impacted as a result when Penguin hits within the next few weeks or months?

If what you’re reading so far sounds geeky and alien, don’t worry. Just call 6362 0123 or send us a Request for Quotation here! If not, read on..

The Link Graph – Bad Neighborhoods

Google (and to a certain extent Yahoo) knows a lot about what bad links look like now. They know where a lot of them live and they also understand their DNA. (Ip address)

Once Google start looking it becomes pretty easy to spot the bad from the good and natural.

The link graph is a kind of network graph and is made up of a series of “nodes” or clusters. Clusters form around IPs and as a result it becomes relatively easy to start to build a picture of ownership, or association. An illustrative example of this can be seen below:

Node Illustration

Google assigns weight or authority to links using its own PageRank currency, but like any currency it is limited and that means that we all have to work hard to earn it from sites that have, over time, built up enough to go around.

This means that almost all sites that use “manipulative” authority to rank higher will be getting it from an area or areas of the link graph associated with other sites doing the same. PageRank isn’t limitless.

These “bad neighborhoods” can be “extracted” by Google, analyzed and dumped relatively easily to leave a graph that looks a little like this:

Bad SEO Neighbourhood

They won’t disappear, but Google will devalue them and remove them from the PageRank picture, rendering them useless.

Expect this process to accelerate now the search giant has so much data on “spammy links” and swathes of link profiles getting knocked out overnight.

The concern of course is that there will be collateral damage, which is really what this process is, there will be some who are ranked successfully, and some who are not.

Link Building Speed

Another area of interest at present is the rate at which sites acquire links. Many clients have spoken out on the speed of link acquisition. Many clients demand to have the most amount of link, in the shortest amount of time. In recent months there definitely has been a noticeable change in how new links are being treated. While this is very much theory my view is that Google have become very good now at spotting link velocity “spikes” and anything out of the ordinary is immediately devalued.

Whether this is indefinitely or limited by time (in the same way “sandbox” works) I am not sure but there are definite correlations between sites that earn links consistently and good ranking increases. Those that earn lots quickly do not get the same relative effect.

And it would be relatively straightforward to move into the Penguin model, if it isn’t there already. The chart below shows an example of a “bumpy” link acquisition profile and as in the example anything above the “normalized” line could be devalued.

Link Trust

The “trust” of a link is also something of interest to Google. Quality is one thing (how much juice the link carries), but trust is entirely another thing.

Majestic SEO has captured this reality best with the launch of its new Citation and Trust flow metrics to help identify untrusted links.

How is trust measured? In simple terms it is about good and bad neighborhoods again.

In my view Google uses its Hilltop algorithm, which identifies so-called “expert documents” (websites) across the web, which are seen as shining beacons of trust and delight! The closer your site is to those documents the better the neighborhood. It’s a little like living on the “right” road.

If your link profile contains a good proportion of links from trusted sites then that will act as a “shield” from future updates and allow some slack for other links that are less trustworthy.

Social Signals (Facebook & Twitter especially!)

Many Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) pros believe that social signals will play a more significant role in the next iteration of Penguin.

While social authority, as it is becoming known, makes a lot of sense in some markets, it also has limitations. Many verticals see little to no social interaction and without big pots of social data a system that qualifies link quality by the number of social shares across site or piece of content can’t work effectively.

In the digital marketing industry it would work like a dream but for others it is a non-starter, for now. Google+ is Google’s attempt to fill that void and by forcing as many people as possible to work logged in they are getting everyone closer to Plus and the handing over of that missing data.

In principle it is possible though that social sharing and other signals may well be used in a small way to qualify link quality.

Anchor Text

Most SEO professionals will point to anchor text as the key nap shot metric when it comes to identifying spammy link profiles. The first Penguin rollout would undoubtedly have used this data to begin drilling down into link quality.

iClick Media have discussed this issue with many of the other SEO practitioners in Singapore and their opinions on what the key indicator of spam was in researching this post and almost all pointed to anchor text.

Expect this to tighten even more as Google’s understanding of what natural “looks like” improves.

Relevancy

One area that will certainly be under the microscope as Google looks to improve its latent semantic understanding is relevancy. As it builds up a picture of relevant associations that data can be used to assign more weight to relevant links. Penguin will certainly be targeting links with no relevance in future.

iClick Media is going to share with you 5 secrets on how you can market your website to improve the visibility and branding! The web today (2013) comprises of trillions and trillions of links. Who links to your money site (website) and how they link to it is the fundamental factor driving your search engine rankings and your website’s traffic. If you’re not sure where and how to begin when it comes to building links with other sites, here are 5 easy ways to get started:
1. Create a blog. (or just more pieces of content on your site!)
Creating content (to be exact, unique content) on a consistent basis not only builds links internally (by linking out from your posts), but it also gives you the ability to build links naturally. Remember that content is your greatest asset when attracting links and it will be your most profitable asset when it comes to conversion. A blog is essential to many strategies outlined here, such as linking out. You absolutely need a blog in today’s online environment to survive. If you’re not sure how to design and develop a blog, you can ask your friends who studied IT for help. If you don’t have any friends in IT, or if you’re just too shy to ask, contact a professional web design company in Singapore, like iClick Media!

We’ve created many different systems for companies such as UOB, Singapore Airlines, etc and we’ll be glad to help. Just call 6362 0123 to get a free quotation. Don’t be shy.

2. Ask people you know for a link.
Whether it’s your friends, colleagues, relatives, employees, ex-boy friends, flings you know at the pub, business partners, clients, or anyone else, ask them for a link. Someone you know might have a website or blog, so take advantage of that. It never kill to ask, right? By asking, you never know you would have a free quality link from a Page Rank 7 (PR7) site. Remember this, the more quality backlinks you have, the better it is for your website’s ranking on SEO.

3. Make it easy to link to you.
If you want people to link to you, make it easy for them. DUH!

Create HTML-ready snippets that people can copy and paste onto their website. Either create a “Link to Us” page or use a little JavaScript to generate the HTML at the end of each article or post. Again, if you’re unsure how to do, either ask your friends/colleagues or seek a professional web design company like iClick Media to help you. It’s not a free service, but hey, you’ll be getting quality work done, at the soonest possible time.

Note: This might not be the best option for every community. Are you in the envelope trimming niche? Then this is perfect. Are you talking about internet-related business? Then this might not be your best bet, because the majority of your audience probably already knows how to link.

4. Link out.
Linking out is huge. Don’t be a link hoarder; you’re going to create content, so use it to gain favor with other people. Do unto others what you want others to do to you. If you read something great, link it to them. In the same way, people will want to link to you if you produce quality unique content. Right? That’s the way the world turns right?

5. Paid directories.
Some directories ask for money before accepting your link(s) in their listings. Dir.Yahoo.com, for example, is a paid directory. Once again, while some of these can pass on legitimate value, others offer little and aren’t worth your time or money. You’ll need to know whether its a dofollow or a nofollow site. Also, some sites which are nofollow can actually bring you good value for money because they bring positive conversion and quality eyeballs to your brand. Business decision to follow to decide whether or not to buy.

Internet Yellow Pages

So.. what’s next?

To improve your website ranking, there are 1,001 ways to do it. If you do not have the time and expertise to do it, its simple! Just call iClick Media, the reliable web design company in Singapore, at 6362 0123! Our sales consultant would be in touch with you very shortly.

Cheers!

Many people say there is no such thing as SEO-friendly URL structure. Especially the IT personnel in your IT Department. Many claim that search engines are perfectly capable of making sense of any type of URL and pretty much any URL structure. In most cases, the people who say this are web masters.

iClick Media have also noticed that sometimes, web masters and SEO Specialists live in two parallel universes, each with its own center of gravity. While web masters basically care about site speed, crawlability, and other technical stuff, SEO Specialists are mostly focused on what constitutes their sacred grail: website rankings and ROI.

Hence, what may be an OK site URL structure to a web master may be a totally SEO-unfriendly URL architecture to an SEO Specialist.

What is an SEO-friendly URL structure?

First of all, over at iClick Media, we always advocate to call in the SEO Specialist (be it out sourced or in house)as early in the development stage as possible, so that there is no need to make sometimes hard-to-implement tweaks thereafter.

From an SEO point of view, a site’s URL structure should be:

1) Straightforward: URLs with duplicate content should have canonical URLs specified for them; there should be no confusing redirects on the site, etc.

2) Meaningful: URL names should have keywords in them, not funny numbers and question marks.

3) With emphasis on the right URLs: From an SEO perspective, not all URLs on a website are of equal importance as a rule. Some even should be concealed from the search engines. At the same time, it is important to check that the pages that ought to be accessible to the search engines are actually open for crawling and indexing.

Without further ado, here is what one can do to achieve an SEO-friendly site URL structure:

1. Consolidate your www and the non-www domain versions

Always remember, there are two versions of your website (domain) indexed in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing – the www and the non-www version of it. These can be consolidated in more than one way, but I’d mention the most widely accepted practice.

Most SEO specialist (especially the agencies that are Google and Yahoo Certified) uses the 301 redirect to point one version of their site to the other (or vice versa).

Alternatively (for instance, when you can’t do a redirect), you can specify your preferred version in Google Webmaster Tools in Configuration >> Settings >> Preferred Domain. However, we don’t recommend this because it has certain drawbacks (only do this if you do not have an SEO specialist to task/ask):

• This takes care of Google only.
• This option is restricted to root domains only. If you have a subdomain such as example.iclickmedia.com.sg site, this method is not for you.

But why worry about the www vs non-www issue in the first place? The thing is, some of your backlinks may be pointing to your www version, while some could be going to the non-www version. (hint: outsourcing your SEO to companies in some faraway countries? You could be facing such problems.)

So, to ensure that both versions’ SEO value is consolidated, it’s better to explicitly establish this link between the two (either via the 301 redirect, or in Google Webmaster Tools, or by using a canonical tag – we’ll talk about that one a bit further).

2. Avoid dynamic and relative URLs

Depending on your CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc), the URLs it generates may be “SEO-friendly” like this one:

www.iclickmedia.com.sg/search-engine-optimisation-company-in-singapore

or “ugly” like this one:

www.example.com/?id=7261

As we’ve mentioned many times, search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) have no problem with either variant, however it’s better to use static (prettier) URLs rather than dynamic (uglier) ones. Static URLs contain your keywords and are more user-friendly, since one can figure out what the page is about just by looking at the static URL’s name.

Besides, Google recommends using hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in URL names, since a phrase in which the words are connected using underscores is treated by Google as one single word, e.g. seo_company is seocompany to Google.

Besides, some web masters make use of relative URLs. The problem with relative URLs is that they are dependent on the context in which they occur. Once the context changes, the URL may not work. SEO-wise, it is better to use absolute URLs instead of relative ones, since the former are what search engines prefer.

3. Create an XML Sitemap

An XML Sitemap is not to be confused with the HTML sitemap. The former is for search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, while the latter is mostly designed for actual users like you and me.

So, what exactly is an XML Sitemap? You may be a laymen and this might sound totally geeky or alien to you. However, its really pretty simple actually. What it means in simple English is that it’s a list of your site’s URLs that you submit to the search engines. So what is the usage of this? It helps in two ways:

1. It helps search engines to locate and index your site’s pages more easily and effectively;
2. Search engines can also utilise the Sitemap as a reference when choosing canonical URLs on your site.

The word “canonical” simply means “preferred” in this case. Picking a preferred (canonical) URL becomes necessary when search engines see duplicate pages on your site.

So, as the search engines don’t want any duplicates in the search results, search engines use a special algorithm to identify duplicate pages and pick just one URL to represent the group in the search results. Other webpages just get filtered out.

Now, back to sitemaps … One of the criteria search engines may use to pick a canonical URL for the group of webpages is whether this URL is mentioned in the website’s Sitemap.

So, what webpages should be included into your sitemap, all of your site’s pages or not? In fact, for SEO-reasons, it’s recommended to include only the webpages you’d like to show up in search.

4. Close off irrelevant pages with robots.txt

There may be pages on your site that should be concealed from the search engines. These could be your “Terms and conditions” page, or pages with sensitive information such as your CEO’s number or email address. It’s advisable not to let these get indexed, since they usually don’t contain your target keywords and only dilute the semantic whole of your site. You can read more about robots.txt here!

The robotx.txt file contains instructions for the search engines as to what pages of your site should be ignored during the crawl. Such pages get a noindex attribute and do not show up in the search results.

Sometimes, however, unsavvy webmasters use noindex on the pages it should not be used. Hence, whenever you start doing SEO for a site, it is important to make sure that no pages that should be ranking in search have the noindex attribute.

5. Specify canonical URLs using a special tag

Another way to highlight canonical URLs on your site is by using the so-called canonical tag. In geek words, it’s not the tag itself that is canonical, but the tag’s parameter, but we’ll just call it the canonical tag.

Note: the canonical tag should be applied only with the purpose of helping search engines decide on your canonical ULR. For redirection of site pages, use redirects. And, for paginated content, it makes sense to employ rel=”next” and rel=”prev” tags in most cases.

Conclusion

To know more about how to achieve the best SEO friendly site URL structure, call iClick Media at 6362 0123 or visit our website here – SEO Company!

When looking for an SEO company, a company has many options. There are hundreds or even thousands of SEO companies out there (Be it a local company in Singapore or an overseas company in India, Malaysia or other countries). Each company has different strength and weaknesses and they’re all different. You will need to find and select an SEO company that can best fit your requirements.

seo company

When you decide to outsource your SEO work, you will need to make the decision to outsource it to a company that is either based in your country (ie. Singapore) or to outsource it to a foreign country. There are many views on what is the best option and we would like to share our thoughts with you.

Cons of Using an SEO firm based overseas:

Price
Yes, price although considered to be in the “pros” section, however it’s also a con. Why? Well, the SEO industry is just like any other service and the phrase, “You pay peanuts, you get monkeys” is fitting. Quality long term SEO work requires an investment beyond the cheap rates offered by overseas SEO firms. Also, we would like to share real life examples of companies that faced the Google slap after outsourcing their SEO work to companies that are not Google/Yahoo Certified.

BMW Germany banned by Google

JC Penny penalised by Google

The overseas SEO company not be marketing-minded
The mentality of outsourcing your SEO stems back to the days of outsourcing IT and call centers to countries such as India, Philippines and etc. Initially, SEO fell under the same umbrella since it was primarily a technical function of your website. However, things have changed drastically over the last 3-4 years. In order to be good at SEO today, you need to be a good marketer and you need to understand content marketing and social media concepts as well. It is no longer just a straight forward thing to outsource SEO overseas.

Language barrier
Even if the foreign company that you outsource SEO to speaks English, it could be a slightly different variation. This could make it difficult to communicate and could result in textual content errors. Also, in terms of Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing (also very crucial in SEO), the language and text used could be different. For example:

“Search engine optimisation” and “search engine optimization” are different terms because of the ‘s’ and ‘z’ used. In Google’s eyes, they are 2 completely different key phrases.

Time difference
When outsourcing your SEO overseas, it’s also very important to think of your SEO provider as a business partner. You will need to be in touch on a regular basis. With a time difference, it can be very difficult (if not impossible) to have monthly calls or to get in touch with an important question.

Summary

In general, when considering which SEO company to choose, there can be good and bad firms anywhere (not just in India, Philippines, etc). Wherever your SEO firm is located, be sure to spend some time researching their strategy. If the price or promised results seem too good to be true it probably is.

iClick Media is an ISO-Certified SEO Company specialising in ethical White-Hat SEO services. Call 6362 0123 today!

how to do seo

If you do the SEO right, search engine optimisation is not difficult. Do the right things in the right order and your website will get the rankings it deserves. Unfortunately, many people try to run before they can even walk.

1. SEO On-page optimisation

Optimising the content of your web pages is the most important step of each search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. You need to show search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing) that your website is relevant to a particular topic and try to optimize as many different pages of your website as possible for as many different keywords as possible.

Search engines must be able to read and index your web pages without problems and your keywords should appear in the right places. (hopefuly, if you do it right!)

Use keywords that are related to your business in your website navigation and link your web pages with meaningful words to make sure that search engines can category your web pages properly.

2. Usability and conversion optimization

High rankings on search engines won’t help your website if your website visitors don’t convert. Make sure that your web pages are easy to use. Your website visitors should be able to find what they’re looking for.

Create user friendly web pages that have a professional and trustworthy design. Add a call to action on all important web pages. iClick Media specialises in landing page conversion and conversion tracking & analysis. (This is a different ball game together and warrants a different article on another day.)

The higher the percentage of website visitors who purchase something on your website, the fewer visitors you need for a successful website.

3. Backlinks

You can start to get backlinks to your website when you’re sure that your website has optimized pages and a good conversion rate.

If Google finds several different websites with content that is relevant to a keyword, the web page with the best backlinks will be listed on Google’s result page.

It’s as simple as 1, 2 & 3!

SEO Link Building Techniques

A website that naturally/organically grows an impressive inbound link portfolio from relevant sources over time is going to perform much better than a website that has very few inbound links.

But what about outbound linking? Should you link out to relevant websites for SEO purposes? The simple answer is no.

There is nothing wrong with outbound linking from your website, but only if these outbound links serve a purpose. Think about your typical website visitor. Would this link benefit them in some way? If there are no direct benefits to the visitor and you are only linking out for the purpose of the search engine spiders, consider removing the link.

Remember, when it comes to your website it’s all about usability once a visitor lands on your site. You want them to convert in some way. Whether you want them to purchase your products, fill out a contact form, call your office, or visit your physical shop. All content on your website should in some way lead the visitor down this path to conversion. If your website is filled with outbound links, it could cause some confusion and even make the website seem cluttered.

Outbound links can also do a disservice to the success of your website because including them means that you are essentially promoting another web property. If a visitor clicks on an external link from your site they are leaving your site. There is no guarantee that they will return. Maybe they’ll find something that they are more interested in on the other site or maybe they’ll just run out of time or forget where they started. Including outbound links is risky since you want to keep visitors on your site for as long as possible.

Another issue with external links is that you don’t own the sites that you are linking to and therefore aren’t tuned in to any changes that may be made. For example, you may initially link to what you think is a good resource on a particular topic, but then the website owner of that site changes the content and it’s no longer related. Unless you are checking all of your external links daily (and who has time to do that?) you could be sending a visitor to a completely irrelevant page. Worst, a page that no longer exists.

External linking isn’t all bad, but it’s just a tactic that should be used in moderation. Think about the visitor experience. If a link is really going to help them out, it’s OK to keep it. Just don’t do it for SEO purposes only.

Below are some examples for your info:

• The text on your web page.
• The number of web pages on your website.
• The number of keywords and related keywords on your web pages.
• The links on your web pages to other pages of your site.
• The links on your web pages to other websites.
• The structure of your website.
• The robots.txt of your site.
• The HTML code of your web pages.

SEO Off-site optimization refers to the ranking factors that are usually out of your control. The most important off-site factor are the links to your web site:

Below are some examples for your info:

• The number of backlinks that point to your website.
• The quality of the backlinks that point to your website.
• How often your website is mentioned on social media sites.
• Search engines determine the position of your website in the search results based on the on-site and the off-site factors of your website.

So in your mind right now, you must be wondering, which is more important for my site to rank well on Google, Yahoo or Bing? Some webmasters invest most of their time on SEO on-site optimisation. Some others are very dogged in the sense that they only swear by links from other websites as the only way to get high ranking on the search engines results page (SERP).

Yin and Yang of SEO

Depending on the keywords for which you optimize for your website, you can get excellent results with either methods. However, in our opinion, the best way is still to combine both factors.

If you optimize the SEO on-site factors of your website, you make it very easy and possible for search engine spiders (robots) to crawl and index your website. The content of your web site should also contain the right elements and the right keywords in the right places so that search engines like Google know what your website is all about.

Links from other websites that contain your targeted keywords also show search engines that other people know your website is referring to a certain topic. If other people mention your website on social media sites, then search engines will know that real people like your website and that it is not just link spam.

To know more about SEO and their effectiveness, give iClick Media a call at 6362 0123 today!

Google Autocomplete

Have you noticed that Google likes to try and guess what it is that you are searching for with its autocomplete feature. According to Google these search suggestions or predicted queries “are algorithmically determined based on a number of purely algorithmic factors (including popularity of search terms) without human intervention. The autocomplete data is updated frequently to offer fresh and rising search queries”.

To most search users this is a cool feature that maybe saves them 0.03 seconds worth of typing every time that they search. But to internet marketers, Google’s autocomplete feature can be used for so much more.

The first way that Internet marketers can use autocomplete to their advantage is as a keyword research tool. The Google autocomplete algorithm “predicts and displays search queries based on other users’ search activities”. Isn’t that what keyword research is all about? Finding out how people search? For SEO purposes, it’s important to create content that matches the needs of target audience members. Start typing something related to your industry or field into Google as a “how to” or “tips” and see what pops up. After getting a few good suggestions, consult the Google keyword research tool to get actual search volume numbers. The autocomplete feature can help you brainstorm blog/article topics and post titles.

Another important part of an online marketing campaign (or any marketing campaign, for that matter) is competitive research. Use the autocomplete feature to find out how people are searching for your competition and to learn what your competition is up to. If one of the first things that is suggested for a competitor is “Company X event”- find out what kind of event they are attending or holding. Should you be doing the same?

In addition to scoping out the competition, you can use the autocomplete feature to scope out your own business. As hard as you may try, there is no way to control everything that is being said about your business or brand online. Autocomplete can be useful for online reputation management purposes. Be sure to Google yourself every once in awhile and see what is suggested. If you notice something like “Company X scam” or “Company X complaints” showing as a suggested search result, that’s a recipe for disaster. If you are seeing that, it means that your target audience members are seeing it too. It’s important to get to the bottom of the problem and do what you can to fix it ASAP.

Yellow Pages

Fast forward to the 90s, as the usage of print publication gradually decline, many users went online to search for information. This was the era of the Internet Yellow Pages or otherwise known as IYP.

However, that has mostly changed. People turn to Google for almost everything, meaning that the Yellow Pages are pretty much dead. So is it not worth it to list your business in the Internet Yellow Pages at a paid rate? It depends.

The IYP still hold value for a local business. People may not go directly to the Internet Yellow Pages to look for a business, but an IYP listing can come up in a Google search, especially for long tail keywords. Searchers that are deciding between one business and another will look for as much information as possible. An IYP listing is one additional piece of online real estate that you can get noticed by. The listing includes the most important information about your business.

An internet yellow page (IYP) listing also helps for SEO link building purposes because it is an established and trusted site. Local links may not be as important for a large national corporation, but for a small local business they are necessary to get. Listings in local directories, like the Internet Yellow Pages, tell the search engines (and searchers) where you are located and establish the relevance of your business in relation to geographical areas. For a small business that has a new website or just launched a website, it’s important to obtain links from these directories during the first phase of link building.

Additionally, internet yellow pages are a great place for companies targeting a local audience to get great coverage. For instance, if a business has multiple offices or locations, why not simply list them in the major internet yellow pages (and even local search engine places) such as: YellowPages.com, Superpages, Local.com, Yelp, Merchant Circle, Yellow Book, Whitepages, Mapquest, 411.com, etc. If you are questioning if these internet yellow pages should be part of your SEO program, then start with the big ones first (Google Places, Yahoo! Local, Bing Local) and then branch out to these niche and smaller internet yellow pages.

Another key point to remember about the internet yellow pages is that in many cases they are so aged that your profile(s) will rank in the search engines on their own for various long tail keywords. That said, it is very important to naturally incorporate your major relevant local keyword within the description and fill our each listing completely and include: description, hours, payments accepted, accurate categories, photos, videos, logo, etc. This will help ensure your listing at a particular internet yellow page website stands out and is positioned well within the category.

The Internet Yellow Pages may not have the power that they once did, but they aren’t completely irrelevant yet. There are still people that use it as a resource, and it’s one additional touch point to list your company at and get a link from as part of a comprehensive SEO and link building program.