Cornwall SEO

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seo

SEO Keyword Research using Google Insight

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Update: I didn’t think to check that the information presented was going to be live and so what I talk about in the post does not now reflect the data. DOH! Obviously I should have taken a screen shot and done it that way. But the points are still valid, it’s just the data set has changed on me.

Interesting to see seomoz as a breakout keyword. I would have thought they were riding too high to breakout, possibly recent press has sent a new bunch of people to search

Dannyseo

At first I thought, Danny Sullivan but no. This guy is called Danny Seo and is a Environmental lifestyle expert, sigh! He’s the kind of guy that makes me want to go out and burn tires in my garden.
Looks like he does a lot of TV and print, hence the boost in the search data. He also seems to smile a lot, maybe the new algo has a happy clappy quotient.

SEO Woo

This is interesting as I have chosen the search to be USA centric, this is a Korean of some sort. What I am realising here is “Seo” must be a Korean name and so when someone of that name gets famous they start ranking for “seo”

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Guess what, Seo Hyun is another female star of some sort and so is Hee Kyung Seo.

A quick search in US Google of SEO, only reveals our friends in the search optimization industry and no Korean stars, which is not surprising. But what we have uncovered here is a little nugget of information. How valuable is that nugget? Don’t know, but one semantic occurance, that of a Korean name popped up three times in the break out data.

What I find with this kind of knowledge, is that there is someone, somwhere who will put this to use to their advantage. 99% of people will probably be “so what”? But then 99% of people fail. It’s those who can take a piece of information and meld it to their own use, whilst no one else knows about it.

Lets turn our attention to top searches related to SEO

First thing you notice is “google seo”, twice the amount of searches than the second in the list. More searches than “how to seo” or even “seo website”.

What this tells me is like it or loathe it, Google is the web. Lets not get into that right now. Using “google” as a keyword seems an obvious choice for an seo site to optimise for. I would never use “google” as a keyword search term when loooking for info, but I am neck deep in search knowledge and so may not reflect the ordinary person.

This is an important point. When trying to figure out what ordinary people are searching for, try to search like an ordinary person.

Using a brand in your long tail is a no brainer, using the brand of Google within keyword phrases with the root of “seo” is essential.

Some may like to point out that the optimisation for this site is terrible, and it’s true, I’ve never bothered with SERPS traffic, I get my conversions in other ways, but that’s another story. I just wanted you to know why I am suggesting it but not bothering myself.

If you are in the SEO business and aggresively targetting the keyword you probably already know all this.

WordPress pops up two times, once by itself. What’s that about? Why would google say that someone searching for “wordpress” is an seo related search? Possibly Google is factoring in other metrics, such as where the searcher came from, what are they doing, what were their previous searches and so on.

The important thing is to realise that “wordpress” is within the semantic gaze of seo.

All interesting stuff, it’s fascinating what you can learn from mining data and seeing where it leads. Hope this has been educational, it certainly has for me.

Where is PRWSocial?

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There is a “PR & Social Media In Practice” on today.

I noticed it in my twitter feed, #PRWSocial, which is fine. But then I went to Google and did the search thing and had to wade through a bunch of twitter nonsense before I could get to the meat, which was the offical PRWSocial page.

Which is here if you are looking.

The point is they failed to optimise for the tweet tag before they launched.

Why is this important?

Well, if you have a bunch of PR people yammering on about social media whilst their fingers are leaving grease marks on their iPhones from the canapes tweeting about the conference, you need for people who stumble across the tweet stream to be able to bang the hashtag into Google and get to the page that tells you what it’s all about.

PR people must find it tricky to tweet from their iPhones, what with their wrists being weighed down by those really heavy Rolex watches 😉

So in future guys, know that social media must be integrated into your entire online marketing strategy and that includes SEO.

It’s the same if you are going to build a digital camera review blog, you must integrate to maximise the effect.

It’s interesting how the PR industry is so slow to really take advantage of social media. Meanwhile, it is the SEO professional who is the true master of this domain.

Why No SEO in Cornwall?

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A lot of people ask me if I do seo in Cornwall. Which is a fair question, the site is after all called Cornwall SEO.

When I first started offering SEO services I quickly realised my skills were not best spent in the local market, or even in a more National market. It quickly became apparent that the key to helping a client market their website was to build links. If your website is small and local there is no need to hire an seo professional as long as you do the following.

  • Research your keywords
  • Stick keywords in title tags
  • Produce as many quality pages that reflect the context of the site as possible.
  • Grab as many links as possible, making sure the anchor text reflects the context of the site.
  • Make sure you follow the Google Guidelines

And that should sort you out.

However, if you are operating in a competitive sector and you don’t simply want to rank for “St. Ives chocolate”, or you’re pulling your web pages from a large dbase, or you have a shopping system with thousands of products, or you are a large company operating in a large pond, then you don’t just want a regular SEO. You need an uber seo.

You need an SEO who kicks serious ass and who can take down the big boys.

I know what you’re thinking, is he leading us to a sales pitch?

Nope, although maybe I should.

The point is, there are many different types of seo professional for many needs. If you want me to recommend one I will be glad to and depending on your needs I will be able to send you to the right one.

I focus on linkbuilding, or more accurately, buzz marketing. I use techniques like social media marketing and linkbaiting to create buzz about your website. Which is only useful for a select bunch of web properties.

If you want to know more, email me at lyndon at cornwallseo.com

See, I did get that sales pitch in after all.

How Much Does it Cost to Market a Website

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Suddenly I get the urge to ask, “why do we have an seo industry?”

The answer has to be, because search engines are not yet doing their job properly.

Is it possible to simply forget about seo and publish a website based on the natural ways a human being would organise information?

I think it is.

But it’s also possible for any system which interprets a naturally constructed web page to be tweaked and allow an enhanced page to rank higher than the natural page

Here’s another question. How much seo should a web designer know and use?

Why do we have an seo industry and not a web designer industry which uses seo techniques?

Is it because web designers are a bit thick?

…or is it more to do with that fact that an approach that a web page optimiser would take is totally different to that of a designer?

The different elements that make a web page/site popular take different ways of thinking. Different states of mind, hell different clothes even. If you get a mixed crowd of web designers, programmers and seos, you can invariably pick them out by what they are wearing and the amount of hair gel being used.

Social media marketers and linkbaiters are certainly no different.

The past few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about how a lot of these web development and marketing disciplines all fit together in the most efficient way. My conclusion is that you have to be expert in an individual category and have a working knowledge all the other disciplines to make you own work towards the objective. The objective being a successful website.

Knowledge isn’t enough when attempting to get expert status, you have to do and fail before you can do and succeed. Only then can you understand the distance between failure and success and the resources you need to employ to gain success.

Effectively marketing a website in even a moderately competitive market these days needs a lot of resources. A lot of experts working together. Social media marketing and online networking needs a lot of resources and time and therefore is expensive.

The answer to “how much does it take to market a website?”

More expensive than it was 5 years ago and probably a lot cheaper than it will be in five years time.

Why SEO is Search Engine Scamming

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Danny Sulliven has a post on Searchengine land called, Dear Fox News: SEO Is Not Search Engine Scamming (Unless You?re Scamming Yourself).

It’s the kind of post where I read the first few paragraphs, think yeah yeah yeah and then go back to watching the Cartoon Network.

But lets go back to Fox News, which is an American TV News channel whose slogan is “Fair and Balanced” and tends to get watched by people who thought George Bush was a socialist.

If you search for the story headline that Danny refers to, “top online jobs to leave you friendless”, Fox comes up number one on Google so it must be true. I realise that not everyone who reads this blog is British and so their default position may not be one of sarcasm and cynicism.

In other words:
If you are reading the Fox News blog for informative, insightful content you’re an idiot
If you want to know what SEO is, you google Danny Sullivan.

But I doubt anyone reading this blog needs to be told that, which means I have just wasted valuable time when I could have been watching the Cartoon Network.