Remember that scene in Rambo IV where the Burmese soldiers throw landmines into a murky pond before forcing the villagers to walk blindly into those same muddy waters?

No? What do you mean you’ve never seen Rambo IV?! It’s a classic!!!

Well, for many content providers, that scene pretty much sums up the world of SEO in a nutshell. The landmines are SEO mistakes, the villagers are the content providers and Google is the Burmese Army, eagerly waiting for you to put a foot wrong.

Luckily, your pals here at Designer Websites are playing the part of John Rambo, equipped with our trusty bow and arrow of SEO tips to help you make it through those waters unscathed.

The fact is, SEO can be a real minefield: one wrong step, misguided keyword or neglected precaution could see your content go up in smoke.

Don’t wait for Google to draw first blood; take the SEO war straight to their door with this standard-issue survival guide to SEO.

Common SEO Mistakes

When it comes to SEO, the forever-changing, ever-evolving Google algorithm makes staying above water in the SERP a never-ending task.

Even those with an ironclad strategy and bulletproof knowledge can find themselves caught out from time to time, especially when it comes time for an algorithm change straight out of left field.

To help you stay ahead of the curve, here’s a handful of the most common SEO mistakes and how to avoid them.

Poor Planning

Jon Bon Jovi once sang, “I don’t know where I’m going, only God knows where I’ve been”. If JBJ applied that same mindset to SEO, he’d make for a pretty poor digital marketer.

In the world of SEO, strategizing is a key part of the process; failure to plan and neglecting to track your performance along the way can lead to a myriad of issues down the line.

How to avoid

Create an organised SEO strategy and track its KPIs. As the old saying goes, “proper planning and preparation prevents p**s poor performance”. Meanwhile, the beauty of tracing KPIs is that it allows you to refocus if certain aspects of your strategy aren’t up to scratch. If one area of your approach shows signs of weakness, don’t be afraid to amend accordingly, take action or change course.

Creating Duplicate Content

Duplicating content can be extremely detrimental to SEO. Worse still, duplicating content can also be extremely detrimental to SEO.

Jokes aside, mirror-image text can lead to search engine confusion, preventing or delaying indexing. This kind of digital déjà vu is a common offence for e-commerce sites, often due to the sheer volume of their product catalogues; however, that’s not to say other content providers are immune.

How to avoid

Keep content unique across the board. While it can be tempting to copy and paste content from A to B when a common theme allows, the most effective way to avoid duplication is to simply be original. Whether it’s product copy or a meta description, fresh wording can make all the difference. Conversely, it’s important to stay consistent when it comes to ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­things like URLs – e.g. avoid interchangeable use of caps – as this can also confuse the search engine.

Targeting the Wrong Keywords

Another common mistake is that many content providers try to run before they can walk when it comes to keywords. If your site sells football boots, chances are your listing is not going to compete with SportsDirect anytime soon.

Targeting keywords with a huge search volume is not something to hang your hat on, particularly for newer, younger websites. It’s the equivalent of walking into a gym for the first time and trying the lift the heaviest dumbbell – start light and work your way up.

How to avoid

Don’t try to cover every keyword in your chosen topic; instead, try focusing on less competitive keywords. This will allow you to gain traction from a less crowded marketplace, building your site reputation which will then allow you to effectively target high-volume keywords down the line.

Ignoring Old Content

In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, it’s easy to get caught up in the rat race and settle into the “new content” production line. However, overlooking existing content on your site can be an easily avoidable error.

Historical content that is past its sell-by date is like hoarding an old collection of insignificant newspapers: no-one’s going to read them, they’re cluttering up space and, for all intents and purposes, they’re virtually useless in their current state. But they don’t have to be…

How to avoid

Much like a newspaper, you can recycle your content to breathe new life into an old post. If your historical content still holds relevance, simply upgrade with new stats, figures and information, updating its design and potentially adding new imagery/video. Better still, a simple factual facelift necessitates less work which presents a higher ROI.

Neglecting Internal Links

If you’re publishing copy on your website or blog and not linking internally to other relevant pages on your site, you’re seriously missing a trick. Any time you publish new content, it’s wise to keep in mind ways you can link this to other content within your overall site (or group of sites).

If your target audience is viewing your content, you’ve already done the hard work. The reader is clearly interested in your content by their very presence, so redirecting them to other relevant pages can be effortless. Think of it as a street promoter enticing you into a club with the promise of free entry. Once you’re in the venue, it’s far easier for the bar staff to shill the BOGOF cocktails.

How to avoid

Write your content with your existing content in mind. If your subject matter is close to that of another, find ways to weave your secondary page into the copy and link appropriately. It’s also a good idea to link to your most authoritative pages; this is a great way to build link equity in your new page while further bolstering the existing page you’re linking to.

Only serving Google

It’s easy to lose sight that Google isn’t the only search engine online. There’s no denying that it’s certainly the biggest, but it’s definitely not the only game in town.

Bing and Yahoo are common alternatives; however, if you think outside the box, it could play into your favour massively.

How to avoid

Did you know that YouTube is the internet’s second biggest search engine? Video content is on the rise and only likely to grow in the coming years, according to industry forecast reports from Cisco.

Building your brand on YouTube can be a great way to kill two birds with one stone: getting ahead of the competition in a growing medium, while also capitalising on a commonly overlooked search engine.

For more SEO pointers, why not head over to our SEO Tips blog for some insider insight? Alternatively, for additional information, drop us a line using the button below.

Get in Touch

AlfrescoPlus is the new e-commerce addition to the ever-growing Greensquares online presence.  This brand-new site allows those DIY-enthusiast and self-builders to purchase high-quality outdoor living products online, quickly, and hassle-free. The built-in area calculators and suggested accessories sections provide a super-quick way to get everything you need in just a few clicks.

The site showcases the unique brands that have helped to build the high-quality reputation of Greensquares, such as PrimaPorcelain, TimberTech and SunSpaces. These are all high-quality products that have not previously been readily available to buy online before now.

AlfrescoPlus is driven by the idea that beautiful outdoor living spaces should be accessible to everyone. When the AlfrescoPlus team approached us, they emphasised the need for a user-friendly e-commerce site that would make their extensive product range easy to browse, and hassle-free to purchase.

What did we do for them?

To provide AlfrescoPlus customers with the best possible experience, we created a truly responsive e-commerce website, that works seamlessly across all devices.

The feature-packed website is not only user friendly, responsive and optimised for the search engines, but also contains clever landing page functionality, custom built and highly sophisticated ad/event tracking, sample ordering as well as product ordering, a comprehensive bespoke content management system, integration into Salesforce, order and sample reports, order tracking, automated Google Merchant Centre integration, and much more besides!

Our SEO team optimised the website copy to give every page the best possible chance of showing up in the search engine results and ranking highly for industry-specific keywords and phrases. Optimising AlfrescoPlus in this way will drive relevant customers to the site, improve overall user satisfaction and increase the likelihood of successful sales.

We believe visitors will find navigating the site a doddle, and equally, they’ll find the normally complex world of ordering something like decking, effortless! The site has a blog and social media feeds integrated so that Alfresco can provide inspiration via gallery images, which will hopefully be useful for those just in the planning stages of their outdoor living space.

You can visit AlfrescoPlus here at https://www.alfrescoplus.co.uk/

If you need a bespoke, practical and professional-looking e-commerce website for your business, then contact us for a FREE, no-obligation web design quote.

When it comes to implementing keywords into your site copy, blog content and social media, knowing where to start can be a headache in itself - particularly if you don’t have a good keyword research tool to help get the wheels in motion.

Sadly, many of the best keyword research tools are paid, subscription-based services – which is all well and good for big companies that can afford it, not so great for Aunt Lily and her humble, home-made cupcake business.

Luckily, help is at hand. More specifically, help is directly in your hands!

What is SERP?

Okay, first things first, let’s go back to basics – what does SERP stand for?

SERP is an acronym for “Search Engine Results Page”. This is where the web results of your search term will be displayed in list form, ranked by their relevance to what you’re looking for. This is also typically accompanied by additional paid ads that also relate to the terms you searched.

A high-ranking, keyword-rich site page, blog or post will, in theory, climb the SERP rankings and sit high on the list. Meanwhile, unoptimised text will find itself relegated to darkest depths of the bottom pages – where no man wants to be.

Think of your site as a magazine on a newsstand. Great SERP SEO will see your site taking pride of place, proudly displayed front and centre for all to see. Meanwhile, poor SEO would be akin to stuffing it at the very back of the top shelf, hidden behind a couple of dusty, old blue mags.

Using SERP to optimise content

To keep your content from dancing in the dark like an uncoordinated extra in a high school musical, it’s important to keep your SEO skills sharp. This will help shine a spotlight on your content and bump it up to the main stage of the top results pages.

How do we do that? We’re glad you asked! Some of the most relevant keywords and phrases are available literally at your fingertips – you just need to know where to look.

SERP-rising results

The art of manipulating SERPs is a great way to make Google do the all the leg work when it comes to SEO research. Better still, the process itself is virtually effortless.

Finding great keywords that are relevant to your subject matter can be as easy as hitting the “enter” key. Simply run a Google search for a term relative to your needs and watch nature take its course.

This process can instantly return a myriad of keywords and phrases that have already passed the Google green-light, leaving them ripe for the picking.

Say, for example, you run a dog food business. Typing “cheap dog food” into Google will immediately spit out a bowlful of meaty SEO results dripping in keyword Marylebone jelly.

Follow these three easy SEO tips to keep your content standing tall as top dog.

"People also ask"

The “People also ask” box is typically found towards the top of the results page when you enter your search requirements.

So, using the example of your fictional dog food business, a search for “cheap dog food” would return relative search questions along the lines of “What is a good dog food?”, “What is the best cheap dog food?” and “How much does a dog cost a month?”.

These terms can make for excellent headings in your blog and logical H2s that won’t seem forced. The queries are relevant, the subject matters are ideal and the answers can be seamlessly weaved into your content in a manner that also naturally promotes your product.

For example, if you were to include “What is a good dog food?” as a H2 in your blog, you could easily relate the accompanying content back to your products in smooth transition by saying:

“A good dog food should include a variety of key canine nutrients. Mut Mix 2000 includes all the vitamins and minerals your furry friend needs for a healthy, balanced diet.”

This way your copy remains relevant, you’ve plugged your product nicely and still included the keyword phrase in a high-profile position as a H2. Hot dog!

"Searches related to"

Much like the previous section, another great area of inspiration is the “Searches related to” list. This can be found at the bottom of the SERP, comprising of eight similar searches related to your topic of choice. This is essentially a mini list of searches that Google believes the user may find helpful, should they wish to expand on their search.

The results can range from alternate searches to more detailed queries into the same term; for example, that “cheap dog food” search could return “cheap dog food online” or “dry dog food” in the “Searches related to” section. As Google has already identified these terms as relevant to your search, they logically warrant inclusion in your copy.

Meanwhile, the octet of “Searches related to” results can also provide businesses with valuable market research of what your customers are actively looking for in relation to a product. Related searches – such as “cheap dog food 15kg” and “cheap dog food in bulk” – give an insightful glimpse into what your target audience wants, as well as their buying habits, so it’s worth keeping that in mind if you don’t already provide such products.

"People also search for"

This next batch of insider info is a little trickier to come by as it doesn’t immediately appear in your search results; however, it’s still fairly straight-forward to access.

Simply type in your search term and click on one of the relevant results. Once through to your site of choice, navigate back to the SERP to trigger the “People also search for” box. This should now appear below the aforementioned site listing in the SERP.

This box typically includes six highly relevant results that mirror your search and, by proxy, mirrors the behaviour of your customer/target audience. This is very similar to the “Searches related to” list yet still a useful and insightful tool nonetheless.

If patience isn’t your strong suit and bulk lists are what you’re after, there a number of programmes, plug-ins and extensions readily-available online that enable you to simply extract the list of “People also search for” phrases in one go (such as this). These allow you to effectively harvest these lists for SEO purposes without the need to meticulously scour Google.

So, there you have it: three easy ways to optimise your content at the click of a mouse without parting with a penny. For more SEO tips, check out our Simple SEO Tips for 2019 or drop us a line using the button below.

Get in Touch

It’s pretty safe to assume that what was once dubbed a ‘fad’ that was destined to fade away, has now surpassed all expectations and has become a staple in the lives of millions of people across the world.

Over the past few years especially, voice search has experienced a monumental increase in use and popularity offering online users a different way to search the internet and gather the information they need, with 55% of teens and 41% of adults using voice search more than once a day (Google) and voice search alone growing 35x since 2008 (KPCB). The growth of voice search isn’t expected to slow down either, it is predicted that by 2020 50% of all searches will be made by voice (Comscore).

But why has voice search grown so much? Lets’ take a look!

There are 2 main reasons behind the rise in popularity:

1. Searching with your voice is faster than typing - According to Bing, searching with your voice is 3.7x faster than typing. With faster searches comes faster results, so there’s no surprise as to why more people are choosing to use their voice rather than a keyboard.

2. Voice search is perfect for mobile searches – The popularity and increase in accessibility to mobile devices have, in turn, resulted in the increase of voice search. With 60% of mobile searchers using voice at least ‘some of the time’ (Stone Temple).

The features of voice search

Searching with your voice is very different from searching through typing, so naturally, its characteristics and features are going to differ from traditional search. This is something SEO’s will have to bear in mind and consider if they are to cater for this new, emerging search market and take advantage of the changing online landscape. Again, there are a number of driving forces behind voice search; how people search, when people search and what people search for.

How people search

The emergence of voice search has changed the way in which people search for information in 2 ways. Firstly, searches are now longer and secondly, searches are more conversational.

Traditionally, when we use a keyboard to search for information, we tend to use short phrases to find what we need because it saves physical effort. Using voice search on mobile phones and voice assistants such as the Google Home or Amazon Echo, allows searches to become more conversational, however, as these devices are powered by artificial intelligence, making them smarter the more we use and interact with them. Therefore, there is less need to use shorter, ‘computer language’ searches with a now greater emphasis on natural, human-like dialogue.

When searching for the best way to clean a composite deck on your computer or phone, you may type ‘composite decking cleaning’ into the search bar. This is what we would consider, ‘short, computer language.’ When using voice search, however, you’re more likely to say ‘how do I clean composite decking?’ The first search is shorter, only containing 3 words, whereas the second is longer with 6 words. Purna Virji of Moz found that speech searches tend to be longer through the tail.

It’s important to remember to not make the mistake of likening voice search optimisation to using long-tail keywords within your content. Voice search is much more likely to contain question phrases, which has a big impact on how we conduct keyword research and on-page SEO.

Content needs to give users direct answers to the questions they’re asking, otherwise, it’s going to be very difficult to get your content to the people who need it. A great way to find commonly asked queries around a particular subject is to use a tool called Answer the Public. Simply enter a keyword to receive a bunch of related questions around that keyword. Here’s what we get when we search for ‘composite decking’.

Each one of these natural language phrases is an insight into the mindset of your target audience that allows you to tailor your content to match their queries.

When people search

As a result of voice search being much more convenient, people are using it in more places and on a more regular basis than ever before. According to Google, ‘near me now’ searches have increased by 150% over the last two years, with these searches happening in places that you may not expect.

A survey conducted by Stone Temple found that users were significantly more likely to use voice search in public places last year in comparison to the previous year. Places such as gyms, cinemas and even public toilets! Proving that searchers have a lot more local intent when they’re searching on their mobile phones.

As a result of this, SEO’s can gain increased traffic by carefully incorporating a number of distinct keywords into their content. Such as

• Landmarks around businesses
• Including ‘near me’ in title tags, meta descriptions, anchor texts and internal links
• Including phrases that people use to describe the area around your locations
• The titles of local organisations that are relevant to your business

This is further emphasised by the fact that in 2016, 22% of people used voice search to find local information (Internet Trends Report) and that 50% of local mobile searches by a consumer lead to a store visit in a day. There’s no greater incentive to optimise for voice.

What people search for

Voice changes how users get their search results. Slowly but surely, Google is moving away from a search engine where people go to gain masses of information, to a place where people go to gain instant answers. This trend is emphasised by the introduction of SERP features such as Knowledge Panels and Featured Snippets, which has resulted in the number of organic clicks dropping as the information and answers that users are searching for are appearing right there in the results.

Google is implementing the same answer-focused algorithms to provide voice searchers with results as the intent of their searches change. So, enabling your content to answer the common questions that searchers are asking by targeting SERP features such as Featured Snippets is the best way to be shown for voice searches.

Optimising for Voice Search

Now that we’ve looked at the main characteristics that voice search has changed about traditional search and briefly on how you can manipulate your content to satisfy these changes, we can now delve a little deeper into the technical aspects of how to optimise your website and business for the best voice search results.

Utilise structured data

Schema markup, also known as structured data, is a great way to optimise the content on your website for search engines to pull it and offer it to voice searches.

If you do not know what schema markup is, visit our previously written blog here to learn more. Essentially, schema markup is metadata. Data about the information on your website, which is found within your site’s source code. Searchers cannot see this data, but it helps search engines to organise and classify your content such as opening hours, contact information and address.

As previously stated, voice searchers usually want instant answers. By enabling search engines to classify essential business information as such will give you a greater chance of being ranked over competitors. Google has recently announced support for new FAQ structured data. Making it easier for your answers to commonly asked questions to be classified by Google and presented to users in both normal and voice search.

Submitting a detailed sitemap to Google and ensuring your structured data pages aren’t blocked by robots.txt and other control methods are greats ways of getting your content classified also.

Claiming your Google My Business listing

As we touched on above, voice search experiences a high number of local queries by searchers. Therefore, it is essential to claim your Google My Business listing, where you can input your business’ name, address, contact number and description.

Another important feature is choosing relevant categories that your business falls under. Selecting the correct category can be the difference between your business appearing at the top of voice search results or not.

Become mobile-friendly

As mobile phones are one of the main devices in which voice searches are performed, you need to ensure that your website is mobile friendly. Google recommends a responsive website that loads fast, which again you can learn more about in our blog here. With voice searchers wanting instant answers to their questions, your website will need to load information as quickly as possible.

Once your website design and speed are up to scratch, you can now focus on your content. In order to rank for voice searches, ensure your content is optimised for it to be scanned quickly. Leave a lot of white spaces, use short sentences, small paragraphs with simple words and engaging sub-headings.

Answer customer questions in blog posts

We identified above that voice search has changed how people search. With robotic keywords being replaced with longer, more conversational keywords as users look to receive direct answers for commonly asked questions around a particular topic and even provided a tool to help understand the common queries around a particular search term. This is a great starting point to understand what information searchers in your industry are looking for.

Once you understand the questions commonly asked by searchers, you are then able to create content to cater to them. One way to do this is to create a FAQ page which provides short and concise answers to all of the frequently asked questions from your customers. Another is to create dedicated blog posts that focus on single questions. Here you have more freedom to answer a question in more detail, giving search engines more content to choose from and give back to voice searches.

Creating content around your customer’s common queries dramatically increases your chances of appearing higher in voice search results.

Voice search and its impact on users and businesses over the last decade has changed dramatically. Its future is unpredictable, but recent years have shown us that it is not slowing down anytime soon. Therefore, it is important that marketers and business owners do not ignore this trend and instead understand how to best optimise their website and content for voice. It is not easy, but by optimising for voice search your content will become more ‘human’ and will accommodate will ever-changing dynamic of online search.

Each year, Google hosts its I/O keynote event where they share their upcoming innovative hardware and software updates with the world. This year, the keynote was held at the Shoreline Amphitheatre of Mountain View, California and yet again, Google unveiled a whole host of changes and updates across their product line and operating systems.

Introduction  

The event kicked off with speaker Sundar Pichai reiterating Google’s mission to ‘organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’ and how this translates into what Google does and what they’re trying to do. He mentions that Google has transformed from a company that helps with finances to a company that ‘helps you get things done’, and how they are achieving this new rhetoric with the help of their new products and services. Sundar moves on to say that building a more helpful Google starts with search, the core aspect of Google, and demonstrates some of the changes coming to search, starting with more detailed news and podcast results. Sundar claims that what’s most helpful and understanding in the world is ‘visual information’, which leads onto the first major highlight of the event!

Visual information – AR in search

The first innovative feature shown off was the inclusion of augmented reality right into search results. Now, you can get 3D models within search results that can be brought into the real world with the help of your device’s camera. Google’s AR and Google Lens VP Aparna Chennapragada demonstrated the new feature to watching crowd where she brought to life a human muscle, a pair of shoes and a terrifying great white shark! These 3D models aren’t just to play with however, they can be used to help with shopping (seeing how a pair of shoes look with a particular outfit), or with education (seeing how a certain muscle flexes and extends). Google has partnered up with many organisations such as NASA and New Balance to integrate these AR images into your results.

A smarter Google Lens

Google Lens is the AI assistant that works with your smartphone camera provide users with ‘visual answers to visual questions.’ Google has made improvements to the Google Lens so that it can now leverage Google’s extensive amount of data to help you choose what to eat at a restaurant for example, simply by pointing your smartphone’s camera at the menu. Here, Google Lens will display the most popular dishes, images of what they look like and customer reviews. It can even help with splitting the bill! Further demonstrations are shown in the integration of Google Lens with Translate. Here, Aparna demonstrates how Google Lens can help with translations of unfamiliar text with providing not just text translations but with audio, highlighting each word as it’s read out to give you more context on what the text means

Assistant becomes more helpful

Thanks to developments within recurrent neural networks, Google has been able to create new speech recognition and language understanding models to make Assistant perform locally on your smartphone. This has resulted in speech procession at near zero latency and transcription in real time, even completely offline. The new and improved Assistant will now understand your questions and queries and provide you with answers up to 10-times faster. Multitasking across several apps is now possible with Continued Conversation, where you can make a number of requests in a row without the need to say “Hey Google” every time. The Assistant will now use what it learns about you to better understand the context of what you say and offer more personalised suggestions as it learns your daily routine and preferences in entertainment, style and food. A new ‘Driving Mode’ will also provide hands-free assistance when you’re navigating the roads with Maps or Waze.

Duplex can now use the Internet

Google introduced Duplex to the world last year in extraordinary fashion, in which Google Assistant was able to make phone calls for you to perform services like book a table at a restaurant or a hair appointment. This year, Google announced that Duplex has learned to use the Internet! Demonstrated on stage where we see Assistant book a rental car, Duplex will filter through the booking site, entering all of your details as it navigates – there goes the ‘I am not a robot’ defence!

Auto-delete Google’s data collection

With the recent hysteria and spotlight over privacy and data, Google has made an attempt to curb the user’s worries by allowing them to micro-manage what data Google holds. Coming in the not so distant future to Location History and Web & App Activity is the new ability to select a time limit for how long you want your activity data to be saved (3-18 months) and any data older than the selected time will be automatically deleted from your account.

New low-budget Pixels

Despite the popularity of the Google Pixel range, Google realised that the pure Android smartphones ended up being priced above the affordable levels that made so many customers fall in love with the Nexus phones many years ago. As a result, Google is going back to its Nexus roots with new low budget Pixel devices. In addition to the new devices, Pixel owners will also benefit from the new features such as the anticipated AR directions in Google Maps, robocall screening and enhanced battery life.

Google Home and Nest combine

One of the final announcements of the event saw the introduction of the new Google Nest device, which sees the power of the Google Home and Nest combine. Here, your Google and Nest accounts will combine to give you greater control and security over your smart home devices. As part of this merger, the Google Home Hub has now become Google Nest Hub.

And there it is! All of the major announcements from this year’s Google I/O event! For more information and details, visit the official site dedicated to the event here - https://events.google.com/io/schedule/events/