Engage Web July 2010 - Engage Web

How to know when your keywords are wrong

Posted on July 31, 2010

When you start a new business, it’s important to first conduct market research into the potential business to see whether it is a viable enterprise. You need to look at the size of the market, the strength of the competition and whether you can make enough profit to warrant the time and effort. You wouldn’t just have an idea and begin the business without any research, as you could be wasting your time flogging a dead horse in what proves to be a very costly mistake.

So why do so many people do this with their SEO?

It’s an all too common sight in the field of search engine optimisation to see websites, often promoted by SEO agencies, being optimised for the wrong keywords. Businesses can spend a lot of money, often thousands or tens (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

What happens if you ignore SEO?

Posted on July 30, 2010

It can be awkward and time-consuming for content writers trying to shape articles to meet the requirements for SEO. Those keywords might be necessary, but they can appear clunky when included in the text, and the order of a piece may have to be arranged one way when the natural flow of words is (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Does opinionated content belong on a company website?

Posted on July 30, 2010

I read an article on the blog of a local Cheshire SEO company recently that advised people to avoid adding opinionated content to their websites. The blog itself was a guide on writing content for your own website, and most of what it said made good sense, except for the part where it quite clearly said to be careful about ranting on your own website because anyone can read it.

Now, while it’s true that you don’t want to publish your daily gripes and annoyances on your company’s website, by removing any opinionated content from your site you’re merely stripping your content down to the bare bones, being left with nothing more than a ‘vanilla’ flavour. This is arguably worse than adding the most opinionated, close to the wire content that you can, because flavourless, ‘safe’ content isn’t going to entice anyone into reading it – and it certainly isn’t going to (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

StuckOn client appears on radio talk show

Posted on July 29, 2010

SEO isn’t just about increasing your rankings within search engines and getting more traffic via Google (although of course it’s pretty good for that). No, with SEO you can also open up other avenues for promotion for your website, such as print, television and radio.

Earlier this week, the website CSAhell.com was represented by our very own Darren Jamieson on a Liverpool and North West based talk show hosted by DJ Pete Price. The talk show aired on Tuesday night on both Radio City (96.7FM) and City Talk (105.9FM) just after 10pm, and centred around the subject of the website, the CSA (Child Support Agency).

During the show, Pete Price requested that people who had experienced problems with the CSA phone in and share their experiences with the listeners. Pete also featured some ‘expert’ callers on the subject, including our CTO speaking about the CSAhell.com website. Darren explained why the website was first created and how it has grown over the few short years it has been live to the extent that it now offers advice to thousands of people each month. He added that, because the website (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

With SEO, your reputation precedes you

Posted on July 28, 2010

Recent research into SEO copywriting, and its effect on a website’s success, shows that it is really those factors which occur ‘behind the scenes’, rather than the content itself, that matter the most. This might make it sound like web content can be neglected, or that it can be created without paying attention to keywords and so on, but those would be dangerous strategies to follow.

SEO copywriting is still the final link in the chain, after (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

How to check the quality of your link profile

Posted on July 28, 2010

There are many SEO companies, despite Google’s crackdowns, who still insist on buying low quality links for their clients. Whenever they sign-up a new SEO client they immediately begin buying links on low quality, obviously spam filled websites – or adding links to low quality websites that they own themselves. This increases the number of links that the website in question has, thus increasing their rankings – for a short while at least. The problem is that low quality links won’t aid your rankings in the long term, and it’s oh so easy to spot.

If anyone can find out where your links are coming from, and how poor in quality they are, then Google (with all of its power over the Internet) can easily detect the sources of your links also – and Google isn’t very forgiving.

So what do we mean by low quality, and why is it bad for your rankings?

Google started the whole concept of PageRank itself, and worked out that the more websites that link to yours, the more important your website must be, and the better it should rank. Of course in doing so, Google opened up the whole process for dodgy SEO companies to attempt to build links en masse for clients, thus exposing the weaknesses in Google’s ploy.

Good quality, strong links are good for your website because it means that a strong website has (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

Broadening an audience through your web copy

Posted on July 26, 2010

Sometimes it can happen that a company is concentrating so much on competing against others for a coveted niche on the internet that the target audience becomes ever narrower. In addition, the strategies used to reach potential visitors may revolve around working through lists of recommended SEO techniques religiously. While (more…)