Many people have recently asked us whether we provide the same search engine optimisation solution for everyone. A truly professional seo company like us produce a bespoke seo strategy for each and every client.

Whilst the seo requirements roughly stay the same for everyone, the strategy in which these requirements are employed are bespoke to each client.

There are proven aspects of seo that will work for every web site out there. These proven aspects have remained the same for some time. With the main aspects of a good seo campaign being good copy content and inbound links.

The difference between providing the same solution for everyone and a bespoke seo campaign is based around the keywords that are performing in the client's industry and the current state of the client's web site.

This is where the bespoke aspects of any successful seo campaign come into play. For example; the client's web site may be so convoluted with deprecated HTML that they require a bespoke seo solution to clean the HTML.

In comparison to another client, where their web site may have clean crisp and already optimised HTML, but no meta data or titles in the HTML. This is also a bespoke seo solution.

Each and every seo campaign should be bespoke to the client. Even the proven aspects of search engine optimisation should be custom built to suite that web site's shortcomings.

Inbound links will vary depending on the longevity of the client web site and the competition in their industry. Again, to increase the client's inbound links would be a bespoke seo requirement. Not every web site out there would require a set amount of inbound links.

So, all serious professional seo companies should be providing a bespoke seo solution regardless.

It was this morning claimed by Dr Gregory Burke of DisabledGo on Declan Curry's BBC Breakfast Business Show that accessibility can increase search engine rankings.

Well this is true. A well structured truly accessible web site will gain higher search engine rankings. This is due to the nature of implementing web site accessibility into your web site. When you implement accessibility into your web site, you are essentially providing the search engines with the same information you are providing the disabled Internet users that require accessible web sites. This makes your web site more relevant, thus moving up the search engine rankings. Implemented incorrectly, web site accessibility could also provide your web site with a drop in search engine rankings. Check out our article on The Over Optimisation Penalty for more information on incorrectly optimising your web site.

As well as moving your web site up the search engine rankings, an accessible web site will capture an additional audience of over 100,000 people in the UK alone. With the first online purchase being made 10 years ago, this is now one of the only ways for some disabled people to make general purchases. This is a market not to be sniffed at and can bring an additional revenue stream to your business.

People requiring accessible web sites include people with disabilities like partial sight, blindness, kinetically impaired, psychologically impaired and more. Without the proper accessibility controls added into your web site, then you will lose this market and not take advantage of the improved search engine rankings as a result.

Take advantage of all the benefits of making your web site accessible and reach a greater audience and obtain higher search engine rankings. For more information Contact us.

So, Microsoft revamped their search technology in 2004 and now take that technology to a new service called LIVE.

Is this just rebranding or have MSN brought us something new? Well the service is very basic so far and doesn’t seem provide any additional functionality. They also seem to be taking the same vein as Google™ and are providing financial information against broad, stock related searches. In actual fact if you go to live.com and search for seo, then do the same on Google™ you will notice the results look almost exactly the same.

Also, rather than improve the service that MSN already provide, they have moved the service and re-branded. This is not good for MSN. Everyone knows the msn.com brand and everyone knows that msn.com is located as www.msn.com.

The problem is that msn search is no longer msn search, but Live Search and msn search (Live Search) now lives at www.live.com and not msn.com? Confusing!!! And this is why a strong brand with market placement should not move…

This cannot be tactical, unless Microsoft are so unhappy with the msn search brand that they really think this is going to help…

MSN.com now states that it is powered by Windows Live, but when you search for something on msn.com you are given what looks like www.live.com, but the web site address remains search.msn.com? Confusing again!!!

What are Microsoft playing at? Surely Microsoft understand the power of branding and whilst they are maintaining search.msn.com, they are also creating a new/duplicate brand called live.com?

Normal every day web developers and marketing people get penalised for duplicate content. This is understandable, otherwise you could produce as many web sites as you wanted, all with the same content, but Microsoft can get away with it!!! They have live.com msn.com search.msn.com and most probably a few more domains that serve up duplicate content.

This is not a dig at Microsoft, but rather a muse at why a large corporate like Microsoft would play around so much with established branding.

Summary

Competitive Research for Search Engine Optimisation is imperative when looking to produce a successful SEO campaign. To reach any top spot in the search engine results you will need to research your competitors and review your own web site in relation to your competitors research results.

Identifying your competition

Unlike TV, Radio and other types media, which present obvious competitors, Natural search engine results provide a mixed array of competitors. Locating your competition can be difficult if you don’t know what key phrases your web site is performing for, or should be performing for. Check out The Important of Keyword to see how important keywords are and how to discover keywords.

Once you have defined your list of performing, or relevant keywords, you can then look to see who your competition is. By typing a high performing keyword into the search engines you will get the top results but, you need to identify from these results which web site is actually in competition with you.

Once you have identified your competition, you can then analyse your competitors’ web site and look at your own web site to see where improvements need to be made.

Analysing your competition

Now that you have identified your competition you need to analyse your competitors web site. Some of the main areas that you need to analyse are: -

Your Competitors Backlinks
Your Competitors Keyword Density
The Structure of your competitors’ web site
The Title and META Data of your competitors’ web site
Your Competitors indexed pages

Once you have identified these areas of your competitors’ web site, you can then run the same analysis on your own web site. This will then identity to you the areas that are lacking in your own web site.

Working with the results

You will quickly be able to see whether you need to increase your link popularity, keyword density, change your web site structure, change your web page’s title and META Data, or increase the content in your web site.

One thing to consider whilst revamping your web site is to not compromise your web site visitors’ experience. Just because you want to improve your web site ranking, does need mean you should degrade the experience for your web site visitors.

Your next step is to then re-run the competition analysis for other competitors against other key phrases. Collate the data you obtain through competition analysis close o hand and in a format that you can refer to easily.

When required, you can then revisit this information and ensure your web site is still performing over and above your competition.

Conclusion

To conclude, researching your competition when attempting to receive high search engine results is of the utmost important.

Whilst this is the case, you will receive good search engine results if you structure, write and produce a great web site anyway.

Be Warned

When building aspects of your web site to perform higher in the search engine results, make sure you do not increase any aspect over and above what would otherwise naturally occur.

If you increase certain aspects of your web site to the extreme, then you will no doubt be penalised for this, sometimes known as the Over Optimisation Penalty. You will also be penalised and may even be removed from the search engine index’ if you increase things like your back links to the extreme.

What is the Over Optimisation Penalty (OOP)?

Over Optimisation Penalty (OOP) is a term used by the Search Engine Optimisation industry to denote a web site that has been over optimised for the search engines. If a web site is over optimised for the search engines and the penalty is applied, then that web site will lose its search engine rankings.

How does a web site become over optimised?

Due to the differences between the major search engines and the secretive nature behind the search engine algorithms, it is difficult to determine the criteria for over optimisation. The Over Optimisation Penalty is normally incurred for web sites that over use alternative text and increase keyword density on a web page over a reasonable amount.

When a web site receives the Over Optimisation Penalty, the search engine in question reduces the web site's listings in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Can you reverse a penalty decision?

This all depends on why your web site has been penalised. If your whole web site has been penalised and not just a couple of pages, then you may have a lot of work on your hands to reverse a penalty decision. On the other hand, if you have only a couple of pages penalised, then you can re-write some of the page and reduce keyword density and placement within the page. This will give you a good chance of being listed again.

Why have I not heard of the Over Optimisation Penalty before?

Most white hat (good) search engine optimisation specialists will not have heard of the phrase Over Optimisation Penalty as this penalty is only applied when over optimisation occurs. This does not mean that a white hat seo specialist will not experience the over optimisation penalty. The natural growth of a web site may cause the web site to incur the penalty without intentionally packing page aspects with keywords.

Is Over Optimisation spamming?

Over Optimisation is not spamming. This is why a truly white hat SEO may experience the penalty, but not know why. Over Optimisation is adding one too many keywords to a page, which triggers the search engines to penalise your web site rankings.

For information on spamming check out the spamming page on Wikipedia

Siteexplorer has been around for a while now, yet Yahoo! still provide their traditional results through their .co.uk web site.

Whereas on www.yahoo.com, when you perform a site: query, you are redirected to siteexplorer. Siteexplorer is Yahoo!'s version of Google Webmaster Tools (although not as mature) where you can claim your web site, upload feeds of your web site and receive more detailed statistics about your web site.

The thing is, if you perform a site: query on yahoo.co.uk you get the good ol' traditional results you would have expected to see on yahoo.com a couple of months ago.

Yahoo! also have their new web site skins to give them that up-to-date modern look and feel.

Well they didn't distribute these new skins worldwide immediately either. Is it that Yahoo! isn't confident in its own products, or is it that Yahoo! is trying to port everyone through .com? Most probably a third answer that I havent thought of yet.

Anyway, if you want the good ol' traditional results from a Yahoo! site: query, then go to yahoo.co.uk and perform your query.

What is the long tail?

The Long Tail is a theory born out of Pareto’s principle (or the 80/20 Rule) first published by Chris Anderson in the wired magazine, October 2004.

The name long tail comes from the graph that Anderson produced to show his findings. The following long tail image is an idea of what Andersons graph looks like.



As you can see, the 80% (tail part) in the graph appears like a long tail.

You can see the original long tail graph at www.thelongtail.com/about.html

You can also read the original article of The Long Tail at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

You can also check out wikipedia’s long tail information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail

How does The Long Tail affect SEO?

The Long Tail affects your Search Engine Optimisation campaign just as significantly as any other type of digital marketing.

During your SEO campaign you will no doubt go through the process of keyword selection. At this point you will discover the keywords that people are using on the search engines related to your web site. You can easily divide these keywords into the broad important ones (20%) and the trivial, not so important ones (80%).

The Long Tail theory is that the 80% of trivial keywords will more than likely convert into business easier than the broad terms in the 20%, if you market to those niche areas.

Although there are many markets that have stood the test of time, many more markets are being produced in the niche areas amongst the well-established markets. As the Internet allows the retailer to provide an almost limitless range of products or services, these niche markets can be fulfilled.

The other side of the coin is the search engine user. The search engine users are maturing and no longer afraid to delve into the world of keywords. Whilst broad search terms (the 20%) are being used widely and extensively, the trivial search terms (the 80%) are just as important.

As a provider of services or products it is unlikely you only deal in the broad areas of your industry. So, why not tap into the 80% of your market and provide the users with what they want.

For example, if you are searching for a mortgage, it is likely you wouldn’t simply enter mortgage into the search engine. You would most probably know what type of mortgage you want, or which company you would like to use. So rather than just typing mortgage into the search engine, you might type self-employed mortgage abbey. This is much more specific for the search engines and helps them find a more relevant result for you.

It is these niche areas that are so important and have been defined by The Long Tail. The concept of the Long Tail can also be applied to many areas of online business and Pareto’s Principal can be applied to most aspects of business life.