From all of us at Ikroh, we hope you’ve had a very successful 2008 and wish you all the best for 2009. Here are our top 4 SEO tips for the new year:
1. Always keep the target in mind. Many people write websites purely with the search engines in mind, which might seem like a good idea but will ultimately have the wrong results. The only way to gain and increase business is by targeting your human audience and convincing them how wonderful your services or products are. As search engines love relevance, the chances are that by writing for your visitors, you will keep the search engines happy too.
2. Consider adding optimised images. By optimised, I mean that you should ensure that the image loads quickly as this increases page speed. People have often just taken an image and dropped it into their wysiwyg editor and made it look smaller, however the all important file size stays the same. In order to change the file size it is best to open the image in a program like photoshop, and using that to adjust the size.
3. Ensure your images have ALT tags. ALT tags are the coding behind the image which enables you to give the image a title. This ensures it will be indexed by the search engines so that it appears in image searches. For example, below is a picture of an SEO chart. Normally the code for displaying this picture would be <img src=”image_name.jpg”>, but the best way to write this for optimisation purposes would be to add an Alt attribute as follows: <img src=”image_name.jpg” alt=“SEO Chart”>.
4. Track your visitors. It is incredibly important to track visitors to your site in order to understand how well your website is working for you. Google Analytics is one method of doing this.
SEO Articles Google Analytics, Ikroh, optimised images, SEO, visitor tracking
It may sound counterintuitive but you can save yourself a lot of money by spending a little. By spending money on a search engine marketing consultant you can actually save money off your total budget for online marketing. A search engine optimisation consultant will take the time to analyse your website and your business needs and deduce where your money is best spent in order to give the highest return on investment. Ikroh’s consultants not only have the skills to see what you should be spending your money on, they also constantly monitor the campaign so that your money is always working for you.
Best of the Web search engine marketing, SEO costs
Google’s influence on the internet is so powerful that we tend to forget that there are other search engines. People don’t just search for things online any more, they ‘Google’ them. As well as donating it’s company name to the English language, Google has spawned other, unusual words such as Googlewhack. A Googlewhack is a search query which returns only one result – a rare thing given the size of the internet now.
Google is a lot simpler than many of the other portal style search sites such as Yahoo! or msn.com, with it’s plain white page featuring only a few links and a box to enter your search query in. Sites such as Yahoo! or msn.com offer the user snippets of news, weather, links to their own shopping sites and chat forums, while Google has instead focussed on perfecting it’s search engine. While it does offer email accounts and an online map, these are very subtly displayed in one word links at the top of the page. It is a style that is unique to Google and has become instantly recognisable to the majority of internet users.
The predecessor of modern search, Yahoo! still serves around 20% of all internet search queries, but as Google has 70%, Yahoo!’s share looks pretty small. The Yahoo! search engines seem to be preferred by many female web users, as well as some parts of the business community, so if this is the market you are targeting, it might be worth focussing on moving up Yahoo!’s rankings, or even using them for your pay per click campaigns.
Best of the Web Google, Googlewhack, Google’s Influence, pay per click campaigns, Yahoo
Customer service is something that doesn’t have to cost you anything but time and effort, but can make a profound difference to how your customers feel about you, and what they say to their friends about you.
It’s an often quoted cliché that a customer who receives bad service will tell at least ten people while a customer who has good service will tell just one. It is true that you should always make every effort to avoid bad reviews, which can be fatal for your business, but I feel that this underplays the importance of the customer who feels he has had fantastic customer service. These are the customers who don’t just provide your company name when asked if they know anyone who does ‘X’; these are the customers who tell everyone they meet about your company, and even find ways to work it into the conversation so that they have the excuse to talk about the service they received. These are the customers who rave about you.
Raving customers might be the holy grail of customer service, but this is a holy grail which is surprisingly easy to reach. Simply take the time to treat your customers as individuals and listen to their requirements, or any concerns (even complaints) that they have and then follow up as required. Finding out what a customer really thinks of you can be as easy as asking them, or as complicated as producing a customer service questionnaire to fill in. The important point is that you must act on any concerns they have. Surprisingly, raving customers are not the ones who have never had a complaint about you; they can be customers who had huge complaints which were resolved quickly and to their complete satisfaction.
To put it bluntly, the more customers of this type you can get, the more free advertising you will get. There is nothing like word of mouth for bringing in business – if a friend tells you how great a company is, chances are you’ll believe them, while you are less likely to believe a company raving about itself! These customers will keep coming back to you every time they need your service, and they will send lots of potential customers your way, long after they have finished doing business with you. But providing exemplary customer service is not just about working towards more sales; you can be certain you will have happy customers, and no one telling their friends and acquaintances negative things about you.
Best of the Web Customer service, providing exemplary customer service
In the past few years the way we watch television and use the internet has changed dramatically, making broadband a necessity for most households. With the advent of iplayer and all the other on demand, online television channels, the need for fast download times and reliability is paramount. Downloading a programme from iplayer on a dial up line would take hours…if not days! With a good broadband speed the same process can be completed in minutes. And if you want to watch it online you need a good connection speed to ensure there is no lag on the video, as well as a reliable connection to prevent it hanging half way through the programme (and it’s always just when it gets really interesting, isn’t it?!)
But surely we have broadband for more than just the ability to watch a television programme we missed last week and forgot to record? Well, yes. In fact since the advent of wireless broadband we can make use of the fact that the internet is no longer tied down inside desktop computers. Laptops are obviously portable, but when you’re on a packed train on your way to London it can be difficult to balance a laptop on your knees, so instead more of us are reaching for the mobile phone which connects via the train’s wireless router. With 3G technology it is every bit as quick as a laptop, but has the added benefit of being easy to use with just one hand, and doesn’t take up much space.
In this new world of connectivity the devices that can use our broadband connection to go online is expanding rapidly. Even game consoles connect nowadays, and you can guarantee that next year and the year after, even more of our belongings will have an internet connection built in as standard. The internet is becoming more and more a part of everyday life for everyone, so we all need a reliable, fast connection to start with.
Best of the Web broadband, mobile internet