So Much More - But Here Are Some Basics

As we explained in a previous post So Much More Than Search Engine Optimisation we don't tend to stop at SEO for our clients, but rest assured SEO is a big part of what we do.

That's why we were able to publish our Kindle book Really Simple SEO for Business Owners today - it explains the essential parts of our Search Engine Optimisation methods, most of which you can apply yourself, once you know how. As we noted before, we do the techie bits as well, but the seven steps you'll learn in Really Simple SEO will probably be enough to improve your search engine rankings - remember we got our new website, SEO Suffolk onto page one in three days...

So, for around £2 you can learn how to get your site higher up the search results. That's a bargain in anyone's terms. The book is a quick read: there is a time investment involved in implementing the seven steps, but the new book explains it all pretty simply!

Roy

So Much More than Search Engine Optimisation

When we do Search Engine Optimisation for our clients we steer clear of the technical details and trying to explain the latest Google algorithm, because most business owners, frankly, don't care about the "how". All most of our clients want is better results for their business.

Rest assured we do all the techie stuff as well - including the bits Google isn't using now but might want to use next week - but that's really just laying the foundations for your SEO and it's not what you'll see (or care about) when we've done our job.

There's another good reason for not getting bogged down in the latest updates and techniques: concentrating on satisfying the latest guidance from Google - to the letter - means you might as well be "gaming" the system. It's this concentration on doing everything just to satisfy the latest criteria that gets Google's attention and makes them re-write the criteria in the first place. Only people dedicated entirely to SEO - meaning those trying to get the best results with the minimum useful content - work in this way. Those are the very people Google hates and the very reason they update their algorithm so often, negating millions of pounds worth of SEO worldwide as a result.

It's also why the article directories were punished so severely last year. Article directories used to be a source of good quality articles that informed the reader and made useful content for their blogs and websites, and which enhanced the reputation of the writers. Any articles posted on other sites also meant a useful backlink for the author. But SEO "experts" latched onto this and soon the article sites became a source of variable quality, often spun, articles designed to provide backlinks from the article sites themselves.

Google rightly decided that these article sites were of low value to readers and of disproportionately high value to article writers and spinners, and punished them in a major algorithm update in 2011. Other SEO "tricks" have met the same fate.

What Google really wants, and what therefore continues to work year after year, is genuinely original and relevant content with relevant links. This content is of real value to the reader seeking real information.

So, to get back to Cinnamon Edge and SEO, our system has been developed over the years to produce exactly what Google and its users actually want, and in quantity. That's why our system is more "hands on" and time consuming - because we're creating real content - and why it is more successful that a thousand links bought from an "SEO company" that might give your website a temporary boost but which won't give you the long term search engine domination that we give to our clients.

So, as well as optimised directory listings, optimised blog posts and social media updates, we write original content for your site, post original articles in the best article sites, create original videos and presentations - and more. That's how our clients don't just get onto page one - as they might with any old SEO - they actually get to dominate the search results with multiple listings on the first two pages. You can imagine how much more valuable that is!

Download our case study that shows exactly how this worked for one of our clients and then imagine what it could do for your business.

Yes, SEO still takes skill and we probably don't charge as much as we should for this service, considering its value, but that's our loss, not yours!

So, if you think you might want SEO (but actually want more business) contact us for Search Engine Optimisation and we'll do our best (and our best is very good!) to help.

Roy

PS. There is one "techie bit" that we do put more emphasis on. Not because it matters for Google SEO (at least this week) but because it makes an enormous difference to your results. I'll explain that next time.

Search Engine Domination with Cinnamon Edge

Search Engine Domination with Cinnamon Edge

Here are the slides we used for our Search Engine Domination workshop in June of this year. For a real live presentation, in-house training or more information, call us on 01284 767 193 or email info@cinnamonedge.co.uk

Roy

Why Does My Website Need SEO?

When we talk to people about Search Engine Optimisation, we're often reminded that a lot of people don't appreciate the importance of it for their business.

This is usually for one of three reasons:

1. They don't get much business through their website
2. They don't know what SEO is
3. They have an idea what SEO is but think it sounds complicated and therefore expensive

I think we can skip number one for now.

To answer number two - SEO is the process that makes your site more search engine friendly or 'optimised' so it appears higher than your competitors' sites in the search results. This brings you more of the 'traffic' or website visitors, meaning your business is seen by a lot more of your potential customers.

Well over 90 percent of visitors will go to the websites listed on page one of Google.

In answer to three - yes, SEO can be a bit too 'techy' for some people, and too time-consuming for others. This means you will probably need to pay someone else to help you. However, for a local business, SEO isn't always that difficult, and assuming you have a good product and know how to 'convert' enquiries to sales the investment will easily be covered by the extra sales you make through your website.

And point number one? Well, if no one is finding you online, even the most stunning website won't bring you sales. Whereas we've seen the ugliest websites you could imagine making their owners all the sales they can cope with - because they get all the visitors their competitors miss, and that's simply because they're above their competitors on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

That's why Search Engine Optimisation matters, and that's why SEO is one of our most important services, even if it's not the easiest to sell!

Roy

PS. You might have been approached by companies offering SEO link-building services, and link building is certainly a big part of SEO. However, the way we approach SEO means our clients usually get much more than just their website on page one. What we achieve is more like Search Engine Domination, with multiple appearances that make our clients almost impossible to ignore. We can also create a presence for you on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others.

PPS. Test us out now. Try looking for "foot care Kings Lynn" or "Flatpack assembly Suffolk" on Google and see if you can guess which companies are clients of ours!

PPPS. Then contact us if you'd like to see similar results for your business. Email info@cinnamonedge.co.uk or call 01284 767193 for a no obligation chat.

Transform Your Business on May 11th

Our next marketing workshop will help you supercharge your online marketing and transform your business with Search Engine Marketing.

In one information-packed day you will discover everything you need to know about using SEM for your business - the What, the Why and the How.

The event is next Wednesday, 11 May, starting at 9.am at:

Bury St Edmunds Farmers Club
Pump Lane
Bury St Edmunds
IP33 1HQ

More details are available on our website and on the Eventbrite booking page.

Roy

Googles Changing the Roogles

The SEO and local marketing world is buzzing today as the latest sweeping changes from Google are rolled out around the world.

No longer will you be able to have a top position in Google Places and no website. No longer will you be able to claim top spot with organic search and not bother with Google Local Business Center.

From now on, you'll need both. Experts and pundits, and SEO professionals around the world are watching as the new set up is tested, trialled and tweaked by Google. The idea is to combine local search results in such a way that your Places (or Maps) listing is merged with your main website listing when people search for a local service. Possibly.

But it's all so up in the air still, that no one, except perhaps Google, actually knows how it will all look when it settles down again next week. Google themselves may not have decided, if the multiple screenshots and test results I've seen are anything to go by - they're still testing.

Personalised results have been coming for some time, too, so it may be that we'll never again see a 'typical' Google results page. Maybe we'll all see something different every time we search from now on.

It's exciting for SEO professionals, and probably quite baffling for bystanders, but the important thing is, we're on to it.

If you want the very latest optimisation strategies to make your online marketing as effective as it can be (and that's very effective indeed) we know exactly the people to go to - us.

Contact Cinnamon Edge for the latest help with SEO, local search and search engine marketing. Ask us about our training workshops, too. We'll be putting on a special Google Changes one very soon.

Roy

Contact us by email roy@cinnamonedge.co.uk or phone 01284 753912

Seen a Bury St Edmunds Dentist Dance?

We recently created a new site for a client on a new domain, called Dentist Bury St Edmunds. The performance of the site in the SERPs (search engine results pages) reminded us of an enduring mystery...

One of the bigger puzzles in search engine optimisation is a phenomenon known as the 'Google dance'.

Sometimes a website will be indexed quite quickly by Google and might even appear on the first few pages, especially if it's been set up with SEO in mind.

With on-page SEO and some nice incoming links, a site can quickly be successful. But sometimes it will then simply disappear. The site is still there if you type in the URL, but it doesn't come up in the search results.

Then, just as suddenly, the website will reappear in the listings. It might be a few days or it may take longer, but when the site does come back it will often be in a higher position than previously.

This is what SEO experts call the Google dance, and it's what happened to our dentist site.

It looks like the most important thing, when a site disappears, is to continue link building, bookmarking and so on, as though everything was fine. This may be why, once Google decides to index the site again, it often appears higher in the SERPs (because it now has more links than it did before). It's also important to give the site the authority that steady link-building bestows on a website, because authority is a big thing with Google.

So the lesson is, if your new site disappears from site, don't panic. Carry on as if nothing was wrong, and chances are that very soon your website will be doing even better than it was before.

Here's the website we're talking about, for Dentist in Bury St Edmunds.

Roy

Online Marketing Case Study

Our experiment in online marketing for Bury St Edmunds gave us some interesting results and impressed a fellow marketing company enough to feature the experiment as a case study.

You'll be able to read the case study yourself soon, but you can also enjoy the kind of results we achieved with your own company's online marketing.

We specialise in helping Bury St Edmunds businesses, but we also have clients in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and much further afield, so just ask!

Roy

Online Marketing and SEO Services

Visitors to our online Marketing Manual blog will hopefully have found the recent posts useful and informative, whether they hail from Bury St Edmunds or beyond.

So far, we've covered keyword research, the essentials of website content and starting a blog. This amounts to the beginnings of search engine optimisation, or SEO, and as a company we of course offer SEO services to our clients.

So, whether you have a website and no visitors or you have no website at all, your first priority if you want to make proper use of free online marketing is to make sure you have an effective website and visitors coming to see it.

The selection of a target keyword phrase is the first essential step with SEO, but the continued, consistent use of that phrase and related terms is the key to making it work for you in the longer term.

Part four of the course will appear soon, but meanwhile you can get up to speed with parts one to three, at http://marketing-manual.blogspot.com/.

Roy

Online Marketing Bury St Edmunds - 12 Nov

Latest results of our online marketing test for Bury St Edmunds are a healthy seven of the top eight places on page one of Google for Cinnamon Edge related results.

This is the result of using web 2.0 properties, skillful optimisation of our own website (which is at number one), and careful strategic placement of content where we know Google likes to see it.

Search Google for what we do, supplying expertise in online marketing in Bury St Edmunds, and you won't see much on page one that doesn't link directly to Cinnamon Edge.

You can have the same sort of results for your local business, too.

How many business owners would not like those results for their business online? I can't imagine there are any!

So you know where to come - and we're pretty easy to find.

Roy

Save £75 - and Your Business

Are you making these two mistakes in your business?

If you're not making good use of the Internet to promote your business and at the same time wondering how you're going to survive the recession ... I've got great news!

Because you CAN make use of the Internet and online marketing to help your business thrive, with or without a website.

Now, you could be one of many people featuring on a directory site. You could place classified ads on Gumtree or Graigs List, along with everyone else.

But you don't need local directories or classified ads. In fact, you don't have to share your webspace with anyone when you use Google or Yahoo's local listings service. And you can often get onto page one of those listings quite quickly, with YOUR business literally placed 'on the map'.

Meanwhile, if you have a website, you'll link your local listing to that, and you'll want to get the best possible position in the search engines for it as well so you can maximise your 'web presence' and really start to dominate the search engine results.

Add a blog and you could even have three listings!

Here's the good news. If you want my help 'optimising' your website to get a better placing in the search engine results, I can do that for you. And I'll add your local listing to Google and Yahoo for you absolutely free of charge as well. Normally, I charge £75 for local listings.

Prices to optimise your website for you start at just a few hundred pounds. Take me up on that and you save £75 on the local listings. I can even help you set up and maintain your blog.

Or, if you prefer, you can just pay me £75 to do your local listings for you.

Email me, Roy@CinnamonEdge.co.uk and tell me which of those you'd like done for you!

Roy

Find out more about online marketing at www.Cinnamon Edge.co.uk