A quirky way to introduce you to SEO tips & advice, from a slightly whacky Irish SEO to you.  Merry Christmas.

On the first day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me a talk on website usability

On the second day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 2 key word research tools (Google Keyword Tool & Wordtracker) and a talk on website usability

On the third day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases (SEO Tips), 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the fourth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the fifth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me the 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the sixth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the seventh day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the eight day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 8 great reports in analytics to analyse,  7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the ninth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me  9 great tips on creating a strong brand, 8 great reports in analytics to analyse,  7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the tenth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 10 tips for writing for the web,  9 great tips on creating a strong brand, 8 great reports in analytics to analyse,  7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the eleventh day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 11 great free online resources, 10 tips for writing for the web,  9 great tips on creating a strong brand, 8 great reports in analytics to analyse,  7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the twelfth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 12 tips to do my own SEO audit, 11 free online resources, 10 tips for writing for the web,  9 great tips on creating a strong brand, 8 great reports in analytics to analyse,  7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

On the first day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me a talk on website usability

On the second day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 2 key word research tools (Google Keyword Tool & Wordtracker) and a talk on website usability

On the third day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases (SEO Tips), 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the fourth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the fifth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me the 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the sixth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the seventh day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the eight day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 8 great reports in analytics to analyse,  7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the ninth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me  9 great tips on creating a strong brand, 8 great reports in analytics to analyse,  7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the tenth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 10 tips for writing for the web,  9 great tips on creating a strong brand, 8 great reports in analytics to analyse,  7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the eleventh day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 11 great free online resources, 10 tips for writing for the web,  9 great tips on creating a strong brand, 8 great reports in analytics to analyse,  7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

On the twelfth day of Christmas my SEO guru gave to me 12 tips to do my own SEO audit, 11 free online resources, 10 tips for writing for the web,  9 great tips on creating a strong brand, 8 great reports in analytics to analyse,  7 tips for writing good meta data,  6 ways to increase my link popularity, 5 steps for acquiring customers online , 4 ways to optimise my meta data, 3 key areas on my website to add my key phrases, 2 key word research tools and a talk on website usability

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Do you have a blog?  Not sure how to optimise it? Using WordPress.org?   Here is a list of my top 5 plugins that you should be using on your WordPress Blog to ensure your blog is well optimised and users can share the information easily on their social and business networks.

All in One SEO Pack

This is my favourite and with over 6 million downloads, makes it one of the most popular SEO Plugins for WordPress.org users. It is easy to install and very easy to use. The All in One SEO Pack plugin allows you to set auto generated Meta Data for your blog posts, categories and tags.

Google XML Sitemaps

This pluging generates an XML sitemap which can then be submitted to Google Webmaster Tools.  Sitemaps make it easy for the search engines to crawl your blog and index the posts, tags and categories. You can see my blog site map here http://blog.dynamicwebmarketing.ie/sitemap.xml 

Defensio Anti-Spam

It is important to moderate your comments, this means that you have to approve comments before they are made available on the live blog.  Defensio Anti-Spam is a great free plugin that will help you capture spam comments. Using a colour code and categorisation (Somewhat spammy, Moderately Spammy, Quite Spammy and Very Spammy) Defensio will capture spam comments.

You should ensure that you review anything marked as spam as some relevant comments may get caught in the spam filter. More information available at http://defensio.com/downloads

Sociable

Automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and in your RSS feed. Choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites! (WordPress 2.6 or above is required).

Wibiya Toolbar

Another great way to allow your blog readers to share your blog posts on their social networks.  Look down and you will see my Wibiya toolbar at the bottom of this blog post. Simply go to www.wibiya.com and create an account, choose from a range of applications and when you have finished the set up choose the WordPress Plugin.  To keep track of how many people have shared your information, log into your Wibiya account and check out your analytics and stats.

Happy blogging

I hear you ask, what is Google Instant.  In Google’s own words “Google Instant is search-before-you-type”. Instant predicts what the most likely phrase completions is for your search and shows results without the need to click the search button. This means a faster pretictive interactive search and allows you to scroll through the predictions and see the results instantly for the predicted search phrase. Give it a try www.google.com/instant.

How will this new dynamic, interactive, predictive search impact Search Engine Optimisation and AdWords?.   Google Instant shows  search results as soon as you start typing and the results will be different for each of the predictive phrases returned.  Does this mean that users will choose results based on shorter phrases? If so it is going to be much more difficult to optimise websites for the shorter phrases as there will be a lot more competition.  Will it mean more relevant traffic to your website because you will be able to access your desired results faster? Or will it have no impact at all?

As for AdWords, pausing for 3 seconds on any one list of results will mean an impression is counted.  Does this mean that we are going to see more impressions and lower click through rates and will we be paying more for our keywords? Or does it mean more relevant traffic?

The good news is that Google Instant is only being rolled at the moment to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia and on the following browsers Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8.  Users on domains other than Google.com can only access it if they are signed in to a Google Account.  More domains and languages will be added in the coming months.

So there are still a lot of questions to be answered and we won’t know the true impact until people start using Google Instant and we see the results whether they are good or bad. 

Happy searching

Do you have a website and unsure what search engine optimisation has been completed on it?  Well, here is a list of 12 questions which will enable you to complete your own search engine optimisation audit. If you answer no to any of the below questions you have just identified an area you need to address to ensure your website is well optimised:

1. Did you or your developer choose key phrases for each page? It is ideal starting out to choose 2 or 3 key phrases for each page, this will allow you to optimise for many different phrase or variations of the same phrase throughout the site and maximise your impact in the search engines and have all pages as a possible entry page.
2. When choosing your key phrases did you use a keyword tool like Google’s Keyword Tool or was it guess work?  Why not target terms that you know people search for online.
3. Are the key phrases repeated in the content two or more times? It is important that your phrases are repeated sufficiently to ensure that Google can easily identify them.
4. Are you including your key phrases in headings?  Headings are an important area and to ensure that your are complying with accessibility guidelines, they should be tagged h1-h6 (you can see the tags in the sourse code of your website)
5. Do you include, where possible, your key phrases in your page names and url’s?
6. If you have a deep website, are you using breadcrumb navigation, sample can be seen here - see the navigation at the top Home > Search Engine Optimisation > SEO Packages. This allows users retrace their steps, but it is also another way to get your key phrases on the page if you pages names include them.
7. Is your meta data individual to each page and contain the phrases specific to that page? Consistency is the key.
8. Does your meta data include a title, keywords and description? Some say that this makes little difference but in my experience it does. Also, search engines like Google uses it to make up part of your listing and when you create links in sites like Facebook, they pull in the meta data information to make up the link information.
9. Is your website up to date?  Google likes websites that are user friendly and you cannot get more user friendly than having an up to date website.
10. Does your website contain timely information? Again, Google loves user friendly websites and what’s more user friendly than information that talks about whats happening today and in the future.
11. Does your website have lots of inbound links from relevant high ranking websites and are you including your key phrases for the landing page on or around the link? If not, why not? If you are listed on relevant sites then the links will drive visitors to your website and if the key phrase is included Google will see it and it will help with your ranking for that particular phrase.
12. Are you active online e.g. using Social & Business Networking websites.  This blog is only 3 weeks old and its already getting a high ranking in Google for chosen search terms through other networking sites.

Still confused, check out our search engine optimisation packages.

Happy auditing