Brainstorm Design Blog

Whatever profession you are in, there must be questions that you are frequently asked by clients. So why not feature these on your blog? 

For example, if you're a car mechanic, you may have been asked by clients which tyres are best for winter, or how can they improve their fuel economy. If you're a personal injury lawyer, you may have had a client who sustained an injury at work but doesn't know whether they have the right to sue. By publishing these questions and answers you are coming across as accessible.

When your marketing budget is tight, it's tempting to consider having your SEO done by an offshore company. But if you have to go down this route, at least take the trouble to ensure your SEO consultant has a good command of English.

A major part of SEO involves writing copy on other websites that will link back to you. E.g. If you run a website about outdoor sports and someone has written a blog about Skiing, you can comment on that blog and also include a link back to your website. Blog comments have high credibility on Google, but if they're not well written, the blogger won't publish them.

If you're going to employ an SEO consultant, make sure they can speak English. One commonly employed SEO method is to leave comments on relevant blogs that include links back to your website. Here are examples of blog comments that I WON'T be publishing:

"I undoubtedly did not know that. Learnt something new right now! Thanks for that".

"I just needed to say this really is an awesome weblog, many thanks for your post!"

"Enjoyed examining this, very good stuff, appreciate it".

"Thank you for sharing this information with us…Cheers"

One very useful way of aiding search engine optimisation (SEO) is leaving comments on other people’s blogs, displaying your expertise and including a link back to your own site. Unfortunately, it is a tool that is very often misused by unscrupulous SEO “experts”, who leave comments on random blogs which are no use to the business they are supposedly promoting.

When posting comments on a blog, you must make sure that there is a firm connection between the product you are trying to sell and the blog on which you are writing. First of all, if the blog is about back pain and your website is trying to sell dog food, the blog publisher won’t publish your comments, no matter how flattering they are. Blog owners have noticed that many SEO companies are trying to spam them with comments promoting their products. They have wised up to this and in an increasing number of blogs, comments are usually moderated before being publishing.

One of my clients this morning forwarded me an email that they received from iBusiness Promotions guaranteeing them a #1 placement on Google. Their website states that:

"we guarantee that your website will be found in the regular (unpaid) top 10 results on Google for the keywords of your choice. No catch, no strings attached"

• Rule No.1: No one can guarantee you a #1 position on Google. Google themselves make this clear in their own guidelines.
• Rule No.2: Don’t buy from anyone who promotes their services via an unsolicited email. Spam is unethical as well as illegal. Would you trust a company to promote who uses unethical business practices to promote your website?
• Rule No.3: This is probably the most important rule of all. Getting to the first page of Google doesn’t mean your website will get more visitors of even more business.

This morning I participated in a forum discussion on a recurring subject: Should you exchange links with other businesses?

It's a well known fact that a large number of inbound links to your site can improve your search engine ranking. Google views a high number of links as a "vote of confidence" in your site. What is less well known is that Google also looks at the relevance of the links to your site. e.g. If you are a construction company, it may be helpful for you to have inbound links from an architect and surveyor. But it won't make much difference if the link is from an online jeweller.