Brainstorm Design Blog

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.

 

When you’re having your website designed, have you ever asked yourself the following questions:

1. What do I want to achieve from my website? Do I want more subscribers? More sales? More enquiries?
2. Have I set any targets for achieving these goals? E.g. 25% of new business enquiries should come from my website.
3. How will I measure my goals?

The sad truth is, most website owners I come across don’t have answers to any of the above questions. They know they would like more enquiries through their website but have little idea how to go about it. Few website owners even know how to access their web statistics.

A website is more than just an online brochure, it’s a vital sales tool that works around the clock, advertising your business. If you do the following preparatory work before your website is designed, it will go a long way towards ensuring a successful outcome.  

Early in the Summer, one of our pipes sprang a leak late at night. I tweeted about it and minutes later, got a reply from a local plumbing company offering to help me. When I flew to Israel a couple of months ago, I tweeted to my followers that the plane had landed. And later that day, I received a reply from a local car hire company suggesting I take a look at their online offers….I ended up booking a car with them. 

The beauty of Twitter is that it enables you to track the people who need your products and services whereas in the past you had to go out and find them either by advertising or by making sales calls. And it’s so easy. By using tools such as www.tweetdeck.com or www.hootsuite.com , you can create a list of keywords related to your business and be alerted when people mention those keywords in their Tweets.  

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.