On-Site Optimization

The (Ir)Relevance of Keyword Ranking Today

Posted by Laurence in On-Site Optimization on 26 Nov 2010 at 11:55am

26 Nov

Does it just bother me, or is everyone else bothered by the fact that many SEO agencies and their clients are still caught up with keyword rankings and how well they are performing for that all important keyword or key phrases on Google?

In a world of universal search results, personalisation and mobile internet access one might reasonably think that the role of keyword ranking reports must eventually diminish in the search engine optimisation process……or so you would think!

New Keyword Research Process & Free and Paid-for Keyword Research Tools

Posted by Laurence in On-Site Optimization on 30 Mar 2010 at 09:53pm

30 Mar

Update: Google Keyword Tool has changed slightly...for the better

Google always tries to be helpful and suggests a long list of words that you might want to consider.

Automatically Submitting XML Sitemaps to Search Engines

Posted by Laurence in On-Site Optimization on 19 Jun 2009 at 02:49pm

19 Jun

Ideally you should have a process for ensuring your website sitemaps (html and xml) are updated every time you make changes to your site. Once these are updated you can wait for the search engines to come back and crawl you, download the sitemap and crawl the spidered pages.

Why and How to Sign-Up for Bing (MSN & Live) Webmaster Tools?

Posted by Laurence in On-Site Optimization on 19 Jun 2009 at 09:52am

19 Jun

Like the webmaster tools on Google and Yahoo it’s free. Bing may not bring you as many visitors as the other search engines but we still feel that it is worth spending 15 minutes setting up a Bing Webmaster Account.

Here is what we use Bing (Live) Webmaster Tools for:

Why and How to Sign-Up for Yahoo Webmaster Tools?

Posted by Laurence in On-Site Optimization on 19 Jun 2009 at 09:42am

19 Jun

Like the webmaster tools on the other search engines it’s free; and it also gives you some really nice features that the other tools do not!

Why and How to Sign-Up for Google Webmaster Tools?

Posted by Laurence in On-Site Optimization on 19 Jun 2009 at 08:08am

19 Jun

It's free!  And whilst it may not improve your rankings on its own, Google does infer on its sign-up page that it can improve your site's visibility in Google search results.

Google Webmaster Tools provides you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google.   

To use these tools you need to create a Google Account, and once you have verified your site you will see lots of useful information that Google has about your site.

Setting up Google Analytics to measure Yahoo and Bing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Campaigns

Posted by Laurence in On-Site Optimization on 19 Jun 2009 at 07:44am

19 Jun

If you run PPC campaigns on Yahoo and Bing (MSN) then it is essential you change your PPC campaign destination URLs in Yahoo and Bing to properly track visitors from paid search engines and non-paid organic visitors from your SEO campaign.

Fortunately, Google Analytics already tracks visitors from Google correctly, so one-third of your job is already done for you.

It's a bit roundabout, but this is the way to track CPC traffic from non-Google sources (e.g. Yahoo).

How the Google Analytics API Data feed can help your SEO

Posted by Laurence in On-Site Optimization on 19 Jun 2009 at 07:35am

19 Jun

We love Google Analytics.  It’s free. It’s easy to integrate into your website.  You can configure it to report on specific goals like contact form submissions or sales.  If you choose the latter you can even report on your return on investment from your website and online marketing campaigns.

Most of all we love it because it exposes a useful API which allows us to take a feed of your key reporting data into your AnalyticsSEO account.