Search Engine Optimisation
Ethical organic SEO for Google, Yahoo and Bing
Internet Buff provides “white hat”, ethical SEO services to help improve your organic rankings on all the major search engines. We don’t just concentrate on your search engine positions, we constantly strive to improve your overall return on investment (ROI) by careful monitoring of website analytics and by using other techniques such as landing page optimisation.
The good old days of search engine optimisation
In the good old days, SEO was easy. You could set a website live with a few (poorly) written meta tags and have it at the top of Google within days. Those days are unfortunately long gone. With the level of competition today and the complexity of the search engines’ ranking formulae, it can now take significant effort, knowledge and time to reach your goals of improving website traffic and return on investment.
What we do
Search engine positioning now involves a multitude of disciplines including standards compliant coding with CSS, keyword research, sitemap creation, landing page optimisation, internal linking structure, directory submissions, article submissions, regular content generation, capture of high quality links from other sites (backlinks), competitor research, blogging, canonical URLs, duplicate content, social media as well as the use of Webmaster Tools, analytic programs and search engine friendly URLs!
Any new project includes significant keyword research based on your company’s business goals and direction. We absolutely will not be targeting keywords with little traffic and low competition in order to impress you! We will target the long tail keywords, because we know that’s where many conversions can come from, but we’ll also be working towards the long term aim of high placement on highly competitive terms where the traffic volumes really are.
Getting to the top of the search engines for a few target phases is just the start. Once we have traffic we’ll continue to widen the keyword net at the same time as refining existing keyword targets. This will involve regular reviews of your website analytic’s data, new page creation if required and coding changes to existing pages. We’ll also look at user experience and optimise pages to help improve your conversion rates. We aim to concentrate on your return on investment (ROI) rather than just traffic levels by careful tracking of conversions on a keyword basis.
Build traffic with a WordPress blog
Having your own blog can be an ideal way of proving expertise in your field, building trust with clients, aiding self promotion and building traffic through RSS feeds, your Twitter account and search engine optimisation.
It can be used to target a wider range of keywords, improve your internal linking strategy and act as link bait. Many of our clients have an in house PR department or copywriter skilled to provide blog articles for posting each month. Alternatively, Internet Buff can provide a copy writing service.
Article submission
The submission of articles to a wide range of resources (not just article directories) can go a long way to reinforcing your authority in your locality or business sector. It can also help with generating quality, on topic inbound links to your site. Like WordPress blogs, you can provide the articles yourself or commission Internet Buff to ghostwrite them.
Search engine submissions
In the good old days, it was necessary to submit a new website directly to the search engines using their ‘add url’ pages. That was long before the likes of Google could find your site within days or even hours by discovering a couple of links pointing to your site. So nowadays, once your site is active, we’ll add your site to our portfolio and submit an XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools; this will ensure that the main engines find and spider your website within days. Don’t believe anyone asking for cash to submit your website to the search engines; spend it more wisely!
Directory submissions
Be careful of the seo agencies that tell you that there are hundreds or even thousands of directories worth submitting to! In truth, depending on the vertical or niche your website operates in, there are only a limited number of quality, industry specific directories out there worth listing your website on. Many other directories have little in the way of traffic or are of dubious linking benefit.
Using our database of quality directories and looking at your competitor’s linking strategies, we’ll be able to select a number of paid and unpaid directories for submissions. We’ll submit your site to the free directories as part of your advance fee and ongoing retainer. The paid directories will form part of the recommendations made during the project; we’ll be on hand to guide and help you with the submissions.
Common questions about SEO
QHow long will it take to see results?
AIt is difficult to be general about the time scales involved. For example, website traffic improvements for a website targeting a highly competitive industry, such as travel, will take considerably longer than one in a niche market with little competition. With the high level of competition for the top places on Google, search engine optimisation is now a long term commitment requiring continued and sustained optimisation – often even when top placements have been attained. Typically around 3-6 months will be required to see significant progress.
QWhat guarantee can you give us?
AAny reputable SEO consultant, agency or professional should be upfront in explaining that search engine optimisation is a long term project and that guarantees of top 10 placement are just impossible to provide. However, we do guarantee to run a professional search engine optimisation program for you that only uses industry standard ‘white hat’ techniques; we keep up to date with industry trends and never use ‘black hat’ techniques.
QHow much does SEO cost?
AWe charge a set up fee that covers a full review of your priorities, initial keyword selection, competition analysis and website restructuring (web standards and internal linking strategy). Thereafter, a monthly retainer is payable that covers a range of services from link building, site alterations, article provision and reporting. The fees are very dependent on the scale of the website, the breadth of keyword themes that we aim to target, the level of competition, charges for content or article generation and paid directory submissions. The monthly retainer is paid by direct debit and can be cancelled at anytime.
QWill optimisation hurt my current traffic?
AOptimisation may involve significant changes to the structure of a website and it’s inbound linking profile. Therefore, it is impossible to guarantee that traffic will not fall during initial optimisation. However, where this does occur, it is common for website traffic to recover after a short period. We always take into account your website’s current inbound link profile and the landing pages most popular with your visitors to ensure the minimum traffic leakage. We control this by using 301 redirects and customised 404 pages where relevant.
QShould I be running a PPC Campaign as well?
AA Pay Per Click Campaign is an excellent way of generating leads while waiting for your SEO efforts to take effect. In conjunction with website analytics, PPC is also a great way of discovering new keywords and helps us access a users buying intent by looking at conversion data. Once we have helped you gain free listings in the organic search results, we can access which keywords will benefit from continued SEO, PPC or a mixture of the two.
