The #hashtag used to be a simple pound sign or hash mark. Once the social media storm started, this mundane symbol turned into an online sensation. Once you understand them, you will see that they are a robust social media marketing tool to grow your business and gain new followers.

A hashtag is a keyword or phrase (with # in front of it). It can be written within a post or comment to highlight it and help people search for other instances of this word. By adding one, your content will be searchable to all other users. Choosing the right hashtag can significantly broaden the reach of your social media posts.

Instagram users can now follow specific hashtags just like you would friends or companies.

Hashtags should relate to your product or service, for example, this blog post relates to #hashtags which will help my #SEO and #digitalpresence.

When you are seeking out Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) services, it can be difficult to know which one to choose, and how to know if they are any good. The signs of a good SEO service may not be blatantly obvious by simply searching online, so it is good to know a few tips to how to find the best SEO service providers.

• Just because an SEO service company may not rank high on a google search, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t good. They may actually be so inundated with customers that they do not have the spare time to optimise their own website.

• It is important to seek out recommendations and review the company’s portfolio. Good SEO providers will have loyal customers that will leave good reviews and recommendations for their services.

• A good SEO service will provide good customer service and communications to help ensure your SEO experience goes smoothly.

By using these tips, you should have a better idea of how to seek out the right SEO provider.

The world of SEO is a complicated set of rules for your website that can be very difficult for a non-SEO-professional to navigate. The use of Links in your webpage is one of those qualities that can help your search engine ranking, so it is important to know what different types of links you can use, to try and help your SEO.

Different Link Types

1. Anchor Texts. These clickable links are often highlighted and help increase search ranking for specific keywords. Just be careful not to make this too repetitive.

2. Naked URLs. Is a full URL displayed link and is less powerful as Anchor Texts.

3. Brand Citations. This is a link that is just the name of a company, as opposed to URL.

4. Image Link. The alt attribute tag in the image acts like an anchor text.

5. Reciprocal Links. When two website owners have a hyperlink to one another’s website, such as for complementary services or products.

By using links in your website, you can improve the SEO for your site but you will still need to use them wisely.

In digital marketing you may have heard the term, ‘keywords’ but may not understand their importance in your online presence. Keywords that accurately describe the ideas or topics in your online content are important as they help to bring traffic to your site. These words are ones that you should carefully consider, as when people are entering words or phrases into an online search engine, your keywords are what will help draw them to your content. So, the words you use, need to be the same as what your ideal users would be using to try and meet whatever need they have, that you offer.

Keywords help to generate organic traffic to your site and improve your ranking in a search engine result list. The choice of your keywords or the language that you use, needs to be from the focus of your potential user, not your own. Focusing on single words that regard your services or products may not be as effective as a particular phase of words that help specifically describe your offerings. These are called long-tail keywords.

It is important not to over-use keywords either and just put them here, there and everywhere but to be the most effective, you want to use them wisely and strategically, for the best results.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a very hard technique to master and no one ever does entirely, partly because it is so vast and much of it based on ideas and assumptions. Also the rules and regulations of Search Engine Optimisation, also known as the algorithm is constantly changing so you need to be on the ball all the time looking out for the latest updates and changes.
Unfortunately there are still some, what are classed as, “Bad” or “Black hat” SEO techniques floating around that the not so savvy marketeer may be tempted to use. These techniques can not only have little or no effect on the actually rankings of a site but can even have a very detrimental effect on the rankings leaving a site devalued in the search results or even omitted entirely. If this happens, it can be very hard to recover from it and often it can take months and months to get a to be indexed again.
When it comes to SEO it is best to leave it to the experts, and when I say experts I mean the people who actually get results not just advertise and an expert.

People are not going to buy the product or service you sell unless they know about it. You have to use effective marketing strategies to promote and sell your products. In recent years the importance of web marketing has increased tremendously. Online marketing offers various benefits over traditional marketing. You receive targeted traffic by using online marketing. Reach larger number of prospective customers with minimum marketing budget. There are different types of online marketing options that you can use to develop your online or offline business.

Search Engine Optimisation
It does not fit into the traditional marketing mould but it is the most important marketing method on Internet. You need to optimise your website so that the search engine bots can index and categorise it properly. Your website must be developed according to search engine guidelines. The text contents of your web pages must have right keywords. The number of keywords must be in right density. All these measures help you achieve high page ranking in search results which results in increased traffic to your site. (more…)

SEO can be a tricky subject to master and the fact that Google and the other search engines are constantly changing their algorithm, means that you will always have to be keeping up to date with new techniques.

Fresh content has always been a large part of Search Engine Optimisation and remains so. The search engines like to see websites that are active and being updated regularly. This shows them that that particular business is on the ball and the information on their site is current and relevant.

Long gone are the days when having an RSS feed from another website to yours was enough to show you had fresh content on your site, the search engines are now looking for a lot more. Ideally you need to be adding a new testimonial, news article or event or even a new product or service every few days to really compete on this level.

If you ask any SEO expert, they will say one of the biggest challenges they face when it comes to SEO is with the client. Many clients simply don’t understand exactly how SEO works and therefore cannot appreciate why certain things need to be done in a particular way.

Of course, a client should not be expected to know the in’s and out’s of SEO, that is why they employ and expert to do it form them but having an understanding is vital if you really want to compete in the online industry.

Often there is an issue with making the site work from a users point of view as well as for the search engines. It is catch twenty two, as if the site is not user friendly then visitors will leave but on the other hand if the site is not correctly optimised then it may be hard for it to be found in the first place. If SEO is carried out correctly then there is no need for it to be detrimental to the actual user experience.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a process that is applied to websites in order to get them found on the search engines and improve their viability and ranking positions.

There are so many elements of SEO that it can be hard to know where to start and what is important. SEO needs to be thought about right from the start of the website building process, as some of the main elements are linked in to how the website is programmed.

One of the basics to start off with is the structure of the URL’s. If you have a website that sells toys for example, you should have an individual page for each product. This not only allows you to add a greater number of pages to your site (which is also good for SEO) but will also allow you to modify the URL to be very specific e.g. /thomas-the-tank-tshirt. This technique can really help your pages be found by people searching on the likes of Google, Yahoo and Bing.

So many times I have heard companies that pay for a website to be designed and built for them but when it comes to the marketing, want to do it all on their own. The majority of time, the reason for this is because they want to try and save a bit of money and feel that they have people within the business that has spare time to spend on the online marketing aspect. There are a number of issues with this and I have highlighted a few below.

• Often when it actually comes to carrying out some of the marketing / SEO tasks the person out in charge of completing it has not got the time needed to complete it.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is not as straight forward as you may think. There are many different techniques out there and it can be hard to work out which ones will work. An SEO agency will have years of experience and success stories showing that they know what they are doing.

If you wish to help with the SEO of your website then this can be fantastic as often there are thing that you can do alongside the SEO agency.