UNDERSTANDING

SEO TECHNIQUES

tone
One constant in business is the need to get more
customers. Regardless of your business position, that
requirement to get more enquiries, more leads and
more customers is insatiable.

SEO often suffers from a lack of clarity and perceived

value in this area but this book serves to bring common
sense guidance to digital marketing methodology, filling
in the blanks around how it can make a real impact on
your bottom line.

The problem we find most often is businesses don’t know

or have been poorly advised as to how to achieve that
seemingly simple goal of getting more customers from
digital marketing and in particular SEO.

This leads to businesses blaming the channel rather than

investigating how they’ve worked the channel and why it
didn’t work.

So here we go, we’re serious about educating on the

digital space. We’re confident that this approach allows
business owners, CEOs, and marketing managers to make
better decisions on potential partners (or indeed whether
to take the tasks in-house) helping them get more from
their online presence.
LET’S START
 KEYWORD
TARGETING

QUALITY LINK WEBSITE

BUILDING IMPROVEMENTS

CONTENT SOCIAL MEDIA

CREATION INTEGRATION

SEO TO DO LIST
The advances in search engine technologies over the FACT: Search engines,
last 12-18 months have been as rapid as they have Google especially
far reaching. It is fair to say that things have changed have the power to strip
almost beyond recognition. your website (and your
business) of its online
Google has publicly waged war on webspam reputation overnight.
(manipulation of their search engine results) and they
have invested heavily in devising more advanced That’s some power - so
ways to understand what makes for a “good website” it’s important to get it
right.
To understand SEO, you must first understand the
factors search engines look at, how they affect the
strength of your site and what impact that has to your
search engine positions.
 KEYWORD
TARGETING
This book has been developed to help you really get
the most out of SEO, so we will generally skip past the
basics but to wrap up Keyword targeting in a nutshell:

Google provides data on the volume of queries for any TIP: Keyword Difficulty is
phrase. Giving you the ability to quickly understand an advanced (now paid
the size of your potential market. for) metric from SEOMoz
so may be slightly outside
It goes without saying that before you can start
your reach if you are doing
optimising your site for certain phrases, you need to
DIY SEO but definitely one
understand which phrases are the best fit for your
for your arsenal if you’re
business. There are three factors to consider before
looking to take it seriously.
choosing which keywords to target: search volume,
keyword relevance and keyword difficulty.

Google’s keyword tool and SEOMoz’s keyword

difficulty tool are the best tools in the business for
effective keyword research.

If you make your way to those tools you’ll get some

great ideas and real data for building your campaign.

A nice balance of these factors will provide targeted

keywords that are relevant to your audience, are pulling
in a good amount of search traffic and are not too
difficult to rank for ensuring that you do have a chance
of reaching that illusive top spot
 WEBSITE
IMPROVEMENTS
One thing you probably didn’t know about SEO is that
Google employs 5,000 real people in the capacity of
‘Search Quality raters’. This focus group army exists
for the sole purpose of machine learning - to crowd
source the X factor logic of what makes for a ‘good’
website.

Part of their role is dedicated to answering a series TIP: Consider mobile &
of questions for around 100 sites every day. The tablet visitors. Now is
questionnaire covers issues such as trust and security as the time to invest in a
well as site aesthetics. One question as an example is: responsive site, which
adapts itself to the device
“Would you give this site your credit card details?” the user is viewing from.

A lot of emphasis is being placed on user experience and Indeed, this is Google’s
site usability; going into 2013 this factor will only increase recommended solution
in importance, so before embarking on an SEO campaign above a mobile site
it is essential you really focus on this area to just get your version.
website right!

A good, accessible, search friendly website should be

quick to load, should have unique, good quality & well
written content and be well designed aesthetically.

It sounds an oversimplified approach but it is amazing

how many sites jump into SEO without making sure the
foundations are in place.
CONTENT TIP:
A good website
Nowadays it isn’t just a matter of stuffing your site pages should have:
with keywords in the hope of achieving search rankings,
nor it is advisable to hide keywords within a suspicious • Easy to navigate content
“reveal more” accordion menu. • Clear calls to action
• Excellent design
More than anything, content (particularly on the pages
you’re looking to optimise) needs to be engaging and It should not have:
answer the query of the visitor. If you are doing this,
then keyword density should naturally follow - it is a
• 404 errors
fundamental mistake to try to add in as many keywords as
possible. • Duplicate content
• Poor content
Interestingly, poorly considered and poorly written pages • Lots of ads
often cause visitors landing on your site to leave without
visiting another page. Google and other search engines
recognise this user behaviour and Google in particular
looks quite carefully at this data.

If 100 out of the 100 visitors Google sent you return

straight back within a few seconds, chances are the
page is no good, right?

This data sometimes leads to penalties. So you see,

in 2012 SEO isn’t just optimising for search engines, it’s
optimising for users too.
DESIGN

A good design shouldn’t just look aesthetically pleasing;

it should make information flow well and should make it
easy for the user to navigate through the site.

Think of it from a user’s point of view or better still by

considering your own browsing habits. If you find a site
that’s lacking the answers you need, or that’s difficult to
navigate it doesn’t take long for you to leave, going back
to search to resume your query.

There are some great tools available for you to test your
site with real people. Usability testing was once the
preserve of corporates with deep pockets, nowadays
sites like Five Second Test and the Feedback Army
service can give you access to real user test data for as
little as £5.

Then jumping back to search engines for a second, a well

structured site map will make it easier for their spiders to
crawl your pages creating a well-rounded experience and
a thoroughly indexed website.
SOCIAL MEDIA
INTEGRATION
By their nature, social signals are difficult to
manipulate. This has made them a staple in the
medley that is your search engine strength.

There is a strong correlation between strong social media

presence and great search engine performance, and it’s
no coincidence.

Search and social have a great relationship; the theory

goes that if a business is taking social media and content
generation seriously their web properties should garner a
healthy amount of trust.

As mentioned earlier, Google in particular is employing

real people to try and programatically understand what
makes a site trustworthy and of high quality & expertise.

Along with the benefits to your SEO “trust” and strength

there is a genuine business case for getting good at
social media.
YOUR OWN CHANNELS TIP: Start small, if you
aren’t doing it already
Facebook is the Giant of the industry but Google get your brand name on
is getting mooted success now with it’s own social Twitter and on Facebook
network Google+. This is the latest foray into the pages, and ensure you’re
social media space for Google and aside from the tweeting/posting at least
obvious “vanity” reasons for entering Google has a once a day.
real thirst for understanding how their users tick.

By combining search and social channels, encouraging TIP: Social links and
+1 buttons on website content and by tying social mentions are much more
media profiles with search, Google is narrowing the difficult to fake than
gap between social media and search results. website links. This is why
they are quickly becoming
Bing do something similar with Facebook posts so one of the most influential
it’s clear that being active on social media helps the ranking factors for SEO.
strength of your site, which in turn improves your
search engine positions.

This positive impact can help you grab more visitors,

then it’s important to convert them into something
useful to your bottom line.

We have another book entitled “Social Media

Benefits for Business” which delves a little deeper
into social media - if this section leaves you wanting
more.
REACHING OUT - THE BUSINESS CASE

Commenting and mentioning other people’s work on

social media makes it easier to network with these
parties. A simple retweet can open doors, by sharing their
posts and musings you can begin to make real business
relationships.

Do it well, and get a reciprocated “pat on the back” the

next time your own great content falls within earshot of
these influencers.

The key is exposure in the world of social media; I

appreciate it may seem a little lonely out there if you have
5 followers right now and a relatively monotone Twitter
feed but consider investing time in going to actively
nurture your audience.

Once you have a good following behind you on social

platforms, you can start to leverage that and reap the
benefits. It isn’t a quick fix and it takes real investment -
be that your time or the time of an external team - but it
has the potential be one of your most powerful assets.

We have another book entitled “Social Media Benefits

for Business” which delves a little deeper into social
media - if this section leaves you wanting more.

Contact david@tone.co.uk for your free copy.

CONTENT
CREATION
If you do one thing, make it the production of
interesting, engaging content.

An element of SEO which hasn’t suffered from a

downgrade or upgrade of importance is that of content
creation.

There is a real skill involved with creating content and that

is a fact recognised by all search engines. While the rules
of the game haven’t changed, the elements that make up
the game certainly have.

As a general rule of thumb for writing content for SEO:

Answer the searcher’s query in detail and leave them

satisfied with your contribution.

This content can take many forms and can be housed in

many areas of your site. Your most common repositories
will be your blog, and your service pages.
YOUR BLOG TIP: One of the first things
we’ll recommend when
If you have optimised your site correctly the majority of commencing an SEO
visitors will land directly on your service pages, but let’s campaign is to start a blog.
look at how you can use your blog to support your SEO
effort.

Blogging can connect you with your audience, helping

you convert passing visitors into something of real value
to your bottom line. It’s also the fulcrum of your social
media activity - giving you lots to talk about on these
channels.

Having an active blog can also help with the frequency at

which search engines revisit your site.

Researching blog content thoroughly, and presenting it in

an interesting way using graphics, videos or other more
dynamic content will help you really stand out from your
competitors.

We covered in the introduction that although the rules

are the same the elements that make up the game are
different, we’ve highlighted just 5 types of content on the
next page.

We have another book entitled “Blogging Benefits for

Business” which delves a little deeper into the area of
blogging and content marketing - contact
david@tone.co.uk to get your free copy!
 ON-SITE
CONTENT

VIDEOS / GUEST
INFOGRAPHICS POSTING

BLOG SOCIAL
COMMENTING MEDIA
 QUALITY
LINK BUILDING
If you are familiar with link building, you’ll be
familiar with the ‘‘quality over quantity’’ argument.

Never has this been more true.

As we covered earlier, search engines have ever

advancing algorithms and a couple of updates (namely
the Panda update and Penguin update at Google) have
rocked the industry.

Loosely speaking Panda targeted poor content, and

Penguin targeted poor links. Apologies if that’s going a
little deep, technically but hope you’re still with us.

So when it comes to links right now, the emphasis is on

building great links from trusted, related sources.

Going back to basics, a link acts like a “vote” for your

site from another site. Each link partner has it’s own
strength, the more positive votes you have from stronger,
repultable sources the stronger your site becomes.

Let’s take a look at what makes a good link and a bad link.
 GOOD, SOLID LINKS
COME FROM:

Good, solid links consist of:

• Links from content of sites in related markets

• Guest posts - you are attributed as the author of a

post on another site.

• Customer testimonials - links from your customers

• Industry specific lists - 50 examples of great XYZ

• Social media mentions

• Relevant blog reading and commenting

• Press releases and the media

• Product review websites

• Links from authority sites such as Wikipedia

• Links from your social media profiles for link diversity

These are great ways to get strong, quality natural links,

however they will take time and patience to gather. There
are more, but hopefully this list gives you enough to go at.
 POOR, WEAK LINKS
COME FROM:

Bad, weak links consist of:

• Reciprocal link pages

• Unrelated link directories

• Link farms

• Article spinning & Article site distribution

• Open forums

• Paid link services

• Automated blog commenting

If you are looking to invest $10 in 10,000 links you’ll

probably get a nice spread of the above. They will almost
always do more harm than good, are inherently difficult to
reverse and could see you lose search traffic overnight.

To put it into perspective, you’ll likely get more value from

1 link from the “Good” list than 1,000 from the “Bad” list.
DON’T LIMIT
WHAT YOU’RE
ABLE TO ACHIEVE!

Hopefully that’s given lots of food for thought, we would

be happy to clarify any element from the book, just get in
touch to see how we can help guide your learning.

This isn’t a sales pitch though, we firmly believe that

educating in what makes for a successful campaign really
helps the industry - taking away the grey areas and lack of
clarity a poorly executed campaign can bring.

If you could take one thing away from this, it’s to not be
tempted by the ‘instant’ overnight success that some some
of our industry peers offer. Reaching the top of the search
engines in any sector takes hard work, dedication a bit of
patience and above all common sense.

This isn’t black magic, it’s just good, ethical work that can
lead to real impact on your bottom line.

Good luck!
ANY QUESTIONS?
GET IN TOUCH

e: david@tone.co.uk
t: 01282 686 726
www.tone.co.uk

tone