We’re big fans of WordPress at Ascendancy. The open source blog/CMS is our tool of choice when building new sites for many of our clients. It’s dead simple for clients to add new content to their own site, and easy to add new functionality, with new third-party plug-ins being created every day.

As some of our readers may already know, we started out as an SEO agency, so we’re big on ensuring that our clients’ websites perform well in Google’s organic search listings, and that they reach their intended target audience. Here are a few handy SEO plug-ins we’ve used and liked which can easily be installed on your WordPress-powered site. Remember – always backup your database and website files before making any changes to your site!

1. All-in-One SEO Pack

This is probably the best-known and most widely-used SEO plug-in for WordPress. All-in-One SEO Pack allows you to enter custom Title and Meta tags on every page or post on your site- allowing you to create more relevant, keyword-rich Title and Meta description tags, rather than the un-optimised and auto-generated ones that WordPress inserts by default.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

2. Google XML Sitemaps

This plug-in can be used to generate an XML sitemap. XML sitemaps tell search engines about all of the pages in your site and where they are located so that they can be indexed – very useful if your site is difficult to crawl. You can also assign priorities to certain pages in your site (i.e. that product or service you really want to push) so that they are indexed by the search engines sooner and on a more regular basis.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

3. Google Analytics

Having a good stats package like Google Analytics installed on your site is a no brainer – if you haven’t already signed up, we suggest you go here right now – http://www.google.co.uk/analytics ! This clean and simple plug-in lets you enter your Analytics ‘UA’ tracking number, and pulls some of your statistics into your WordPress dashboard, which is very handy! Knowing what search terms people are entering to find your site should help you to optimise your copy, Title and Meta description tags using the All-in-One SEO Pack plug-in.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/

4. Redirection

If you’ve recently converted your site from a different content management system or static pages into WordPress, you will probably want to preserve the excellent page rankings you’ve no doubt built up on Google. This plug-in allows you to create 301 redirects from within your WordPress admin panel, rather than having to whip out a text editor and your thinking cap! A 301 redirect tells search engines that a page has permanently moved to a new location, transferring PageRank and the traffic that goes with it to the new location.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/

Have fun experimenting!

Over the last few months, you’ve probably heard quite a bit about Google’s latest attempt to break Facebook’s grip on our online social lives. Google’s previous social project, Google Buzz, never really got off the ground. This was partly due to the negative publicity the service received regarding poor user privacy and partly due to the fact that it didn’t really offer anything new.

Google launched its new Google+ service to great fanfare at the end of June. The service currently only accepts new users on an invite-only basis, similar to Gmail when that service first started back in 2004. In an attempt to remedy the damage done by Google Buzz, the service includes more comprehensive privacy controls and allows users to share posts with much narrower groups of people, known as ‘Circles’.

At this point you might be thinking ‘This is great, but how does this relate to my business?’ As yet, the ability to create a page for your business, like Facebook Pages, is unavailable. Google’s current stance is that the service is just for individuals. However, it is widely expected that Google will add the ability to create business listings in the near future – so keep your eyes peeled!

The ‘+1′ Button

Another area where Google+ could affect your business is in the field of Search Engine Optimisation. Just before Google+ launched, you might have noticed prominent ‘+1’ buttons appearing next to search engine results and on various websites when signed into a Google account. These are essentially Google’s equivalent of the ‘Like’ button on Facebook; a way of giving kudos to a product, service, or in this case a web site that you found useful. Whenever you ‘+1’ a page, it will appear under the ‘+1’s’ tab on your Google+ profile, and you’ll be given the opportunity to post a link to the site on your wall for all your connections to see.

At this point in time, there isn’t enough evidence to suggest a link between the number of +1’s a site receives and its organic search position. However, it has been found in the past that web pages which have been extensively retweeted on Twitter get indexed by Google more quickly than less socially-inclined sites. It’s quite likely that +1’s will have a similar effect on search engine results in the future; after all it is still early days for the service, and Google will want to give people an incentive for using their service rather than Twitter. Google are also known for sudden changes in their search algorithm and leaving their products in the beta stage of development for extended periods of time (yes – we’re looking at you, Gmail), so anything is possible!

Hopefully all readers of this blog should have access to a website statistics package – usually Google Analytics – that tells them how many visitors are coming to their website, what the most popular parts of the site are, how much of their traffic is coming from Google, and so on. (If you haven’t got this kind of information, you really should have – contact us if you need help sorting this out).

Many clients feel overwhelmed by all the data available to them in Google Analytics and aren’t sure which are the key metrics they should be looking out for. In particular, many new clients aren’t sure what ‘Bounce Rate’ is. Google’s definition is that “Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who left your site after only seeing one page”.

For most sites, a high Bounce Rate is bad since people are arriving, taking a quick look around, and leaving immediately. However, it’s not always bad – some sites are set up with the specific aim of referring you on to somewhere else – in which case a high bounce rate can be regarded as good. Blogs normally have a high bounce rate too, as visitors come in and only read the latest post. This does not mean there is anything wrong with the blog – it’s normal visitor behaviour.

What, then, can we say is a typical Bounce Rate, assuming your site isn’t a blog and isn’t trying to send visitors to another site?

Many in the industry regard the ‘line in the sand’ as being around 50% – anything over 50% being a poor bounce rate. Analytics industry expert Avinash Kaushik describes a bounce rate over 50% as ‘worrying’. From our own experience, at Ascendancy, we regard an average bounce rate of a typical website as being around the 45% mark.

Of course, you shouldn’t just look at your overall bounce rate but at the detail – are there particular search phrases which have a higher bounce rate than others? Do visitors who enter the site at a particular page have a higher bounce rate than visitors entering elsewhere? This kind of information is key to improving the bounce rate, and crucially, the conversion rate of your website.

So – how do Ascendancy’s sites compare with those built by other agencies?

We have access to many client’s Analytics – some who have had their site built by Ascendancy and some who have not, and use only our internet marketing services. We looked at 10 of our sites and 10 built by other agencies and compared the bounce rates. The sites were chosen at random, though we excluded any which are blogs or which are set up to drive site to other websites. Here are the results:

The average bounce rate of the 10 sites built by Ascendancy is 31.7%; the average of the sites built by other agencies is 48.4%. Need we say more!

Google’s ranking algorithm attempts to determine the most relevant and high quality search results from a particular query.  The search engine giant has recently updated their algorithm (the ‘Farmer’ update, also called the ‘Panda’ update) to penalise websites that have a large amount of ‘shallow’ or ‘low-quality’ content, in a bid to drive spam levels down.

We’ve spoken to a few clients who are concerned that this change may affect them. However, the good news is that sites which have a genuine aim of being informative and relevant to the requested search, should not be affected by the changes.

The update is intended to combat sites such as ‘content farms’ – sites which harbour thousands, and in some cases millions of pages of very low-quality or copied content. This type of site should now be less likely to appear higher in search results.  In effect, this should make it easier for higher-quality sites to be found.

Of course, it’s very difficult for a search engine to determine what constitutes high quality content and low quality content, so it’s entirely possible that some good quality sites may have been penalised unfairly while other low quality sites may have retained their good rankings – and Twitter and the search engine forums are full of examples which show that Google does not always get it right.

Our advice, as always, is to act responsibly on the web – sooner or later, sites which contain a high volume of spam or low value content may get caught out.  As a general rule, if you work in an ethical and responsible way on the web, providing quality content to your users, you’re much less likely to be affected by these types of changes.

At Ascendancy we work to benefit our customers in both the short and the long term. For more information on any of our services call 01952 462845 or email Helen.

You’ve probably heard the hype over the last couple of weeks that the new Google Instant is going to ‘change SEO forever’.

If you’re not sure what Google Instant is, here’s a quick summary. If you’re logged into Google with a Google account (which you will have if you’ve ever signed up to any of Google’s many services such as Gmail, Google AdWords or Google Analytics) then you will notice a difference when you search. As soon as you start typing in the search box, results will appear below it. So if you wanted to search for ‘Green Widgets’, as soon as you typed the letter ‘G’, Google would give you the search results for the most likely search query beginning with ‘G’. Then when you added the ‘r’, Google would change those results to the most likely search query beginning with ‘Gr’ and so on. Also, as you type, Google suggests the most likely phrases you could be searching for.

So why does this affect SEO?

The key difference to SEO lies in the fact that Google is giving you suggestions based on the letters you have typed into the search box. Imagine you were going to search for ‘green widgets’ but when you got to the point of having typed ‘green’, one of Google’s suggestions was ‘green whatsits’. You may then change your mind about what you were originally searching for and select ‘green whatsits’ instead.

The implication of this is that we expect the range of different search queries that visitors search for to decrease. People will tend to choose one of Google’s suggestions where appropriate rather than typing in the different version of the phrase that they originally had in mind, meaning that more searches will be concentrated on a smaller number of search phrases.

Is this good news or bad news?

Overall, we think it may be bad news, particularly for smaller businesses, because it means everyone will be competing for the same higher volume phrases rather than searches being distributed over a larger range of ‘long tail’ phrases. The long tail will still exist, but it will be shorter! Smaller businesses without the resources to conduct large scale SEO campaigns may find it harder to compete.

We think that rather than being the death of SEO, this change simply makes SEO even more important (and challenging) than ever before.

What about the impact on Google AdWords?

The key difference to Google AdWords advertisers is that their ads will quite likely now be seen more often. Every time a searcher pauses for 3 seconds, the AdWords ads shown on the screen will change to the current ‘most likely search query’. We think – although it remains to be seen for sure – that ads will therefore be shown more often for irrelevant queries than they are at present, so we are expecting impressions to rise and clickthrough rate to drop to reflect this.

Is this good news or bad news for AdWords advertisers?

Probably neither. If clickthrough rates drop then we simply have to re-learn what constitutes a ‘good’ clickthrough rate and a ‘bad’ clickthrough rate. It moves the goalposts, but as long as your clickthrough rate is strong relative to your competitors’, this should not actually do any harm.
It is also possible that your ads may be clicked on more often, since they will be shown more often. In which case, good news – as long as it is quality traffic.

When will I see an impact?

You may see some impact from this immediately, increasing as time goes by. At the moment Google Instant is only visible to users who are logged in, which will limit the initial impact. Once all Google searchers are seeing Google Instant, that’s when the full impact will be felt.

A great way to boost traffic to your website is to get your products and services listed on Google’s product search. Formerly known as Froogle, Google Product Search is a price comparison service and a competitor to well-known shopping sites such as Kelkoo, Ciao and Pricerunner. Google Product Search results are displayed alongside organic listings; for example if you search for “Breville kettle” on Google UK, results from Google shopping are displayed under the first result. And it’s not just for ecommerce sites – businesses can list their services and even events such as training courses. Depending on the relevance of your product listings, you could potentially appear on page one of Google.

There are a couple of points to bear in mind before you start using Google Product Search:

• Maintenance – Your product listings will need to be updated regularly, make sure that when you change the price of goods or add new products to your shop that you update your Google product listings as well!

• Optimisation – in the same way that you would optimise the copy on your website, creating keyword-rich descriptions and titles for your listings is crucial to ranking above your competitors.

If your site accepts Google Checkout as a payment option, customers are able to leave reviews of your store which are displayed on the Google shopping search results. These reviews can help boost your ranking on the search results if positive, or hinder if negative. The “Google Checkout Accepted” logo is also displayed beside your listings, which helps draw user attention to your products.

The real beauty of Google Product Search is that unlike other price comparison sites, it is completely free to list on; all you need to get started is a valid Google account and a spreadsheet in .csv format (also known as a ‘data feed’) containing a list of all the products on your website with prices, titles, descriptions and URLs. If your site allows it, you may even be able to set up an automated feed. So don’t delay, sign up and start listing today!

To sign up, visit: http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/products/submit.html

A common issue faced by our clients is that they need to find an effective way of targeting potential clients online who are situated in a particular local area. 

If this sounds like you, here’s a checklist of several effective ways to target your local customers online:

• Make sure you have created a listing on Google Maps. If you’re listed already (as many businesses are) then take control of your listing by creating a new entry on Google Places that exactly matches the listing you see for your business on Google Maps (even if the details are wrong). If you’re not listed already then it’s very straight forward to create a new listing.
• Don’t be lazy with your Maps listing. By including lots of keyword-rich text, adding pictures & video, adding your business to relevant categories and making sure you get some reviews from friendly customers, you can improve your position in the listings.
• Don’t forget that you can target Google AdWords campaigns to a specific geographical area – so that when anyone within a defined radius of your chosen location searches for your chosen phrases, your ad is displayed.
• And of course, you can target your local area through organic search too. Make sure you mention your geographical location plenty of times on your website, and work it into your title tags in particular. You can even target surrounding areas with some careful thought – for example, mention that your business serves x, y and z areas in addition to your own.
• Facebook pay per click advertising allows you to advertise only to specific geographical areas, and indeed to particular demographic groups.
• Twitter is also, of course, an excellent place to find your local customers online and build relationships with them.

Need to target a local audience online? Contact Helen for more details about how Ascendancy can help.

As we work on our clients’ websites, we often see the same issues recurring across multiple projects. One particularly tricky issue that we frequently come up against is when a client is suffering from what we call ‘KFS’, or Keyword Fixation Syndrome.

I asked our optimisation specialist Geoff about Keyword Fixation Syndrome – how to recognise the signs, and how to overcome it!

• Keyword Fixation Syndrome can be diagnosed when a business attaches out-of-proportion importance to a particular keyword or phrase that they want to target in the search engines.
• Out of proportion? What we mean by this is that the keyword is not as important as the business owner thinks it is. Often a client will have an assumption that a keyword is crucial to their business – that by obtaining a top ranking for that phrase, their business will be revolutionised overnight, when in fact the evidence suggests that this would not be the case.
• Why would this be so? Sometimes your potential customers aren’t using the same terminology as you, and aren’t in fact searching for your chosen phrase at all. Sometimes the keyword is overly general and unlikely to convert well into sales. And sometimes the phrase would indeed revolutionise your business if you could achieve a top ranking – but the rankings are dominated by high-powered sites that have been around a lot longer than yours and have a lot more search engine ‘clout’ – meaning that in the short term you may be better off targeting other phrases, saving this target for a later stage in the campaign.
• Can KFS be treated? A keyword fixation can be very difficult to treat – patients are sometimes too emotionally attached to their ‘pet’ keywords for treatment to be effective. However, with a healthy dose of realism, keyword research can be effective as a treatment. By looking at the evidence – which phrases attract the most traffic, which are least competitive, and which tend to convert best into sales (running a pay per click campaign can help you test which phrases convert best if you have no other data on this), a full recovery – and website success – can be effected.

Not targeting the right keywords? Contact Helen for more details about keyword research and search engine optimisation.

Increasingly, we take over Google AdWords accounts that our clients have set up for themselves and subsequently found the system more difficult to make pay than they had expected.

Google AdWords makes me think of the phrase ‘A minute to learn, a lifetime to master’ which was on the box of the Othello board game which I used to play as a child. Google have done an excellent job of making the AdWords setup process easy to use, so that clients can get an account set up (and start giving Google money!) in less than five minutes. The trouble is that many of them are not quite sure what to do next.

I asked our AdWords whizz James about the mistakes he sees time and again in the self-managed accounts that we take over:

• Keywords which are too general – advertising on a single word such as ‘hotel’ or, even more bizarrely, an adjective such as ‘quality’ – it’s highly unlikely that someone who’s searching for the word ‘quality’ on its own is going to buy your quality handmade jigsaws. Be realistic about the phrases that are likely to bring buyers to your website.
• Only one Ad Group – A lot of inexperienced AdWords users will select a number of keywords on a range of topics and put them all in one Ad Group. Keywords should be arranged into groups according to logical themes – different Ad Groups for different products, for example.
• Ads pointing to the home page – Instead of to a relevant landing page
• No negative keywords used – Negative keywords stop your ads showing for irrelevant phrases, saving you money and improving your clickthrough rate
• No awareness of the Quality Score – We could write a whole separate article about Quality Score. In a nutshell, good Quality Scores enable you to buy clicks at the best possible price. If you use AdWords and don’t know about the Quality Score, you should!
  Ads that don’t include the target keywords – By including your target keywords in your ads you could raise your clickthrough rate and your Quality Score (see above!)

If you’re looking to improve the return on investment from your AdWords account, we can help – contact us for more details.

The words that you use on your website are crucial not only for attracting visitors to your website via search engines, but also to convert your visitors into paying customers or clients.

Even if you consider yourself a good writer, you may not know about writing for the web and how it differs from writing for print.

Jakob Nielsen, usability guru, starts an article on “How Users Read on the Web” with the phrase “They don’t.” Users will scan content for key points and then move on.

So how can you write effective web copy that will achieve your objectives? Here are some brief pointers:

• Don’t use ‘marketing speak’. Keep your content factual and simple wherever possible, using plain English.

• Make copy scannable, using bullet points, highlighting key points, and keeping things short and to the point.

• Check your ‘WeWe’ score! In other words, how often do you talk about yourself on your website? You should be focusing on the customer, not on your own company history. Check your WeWe score here: http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm

• Keep jargon to an absolute minimum – even if you think all your visitors will understand your industry jargon, why complicate things any more than necessary? The quicker the visitor can skim your copy and reach the conclusion they need you, the better! Tell it like it is, in simple language. Check your readability score here: http://www.addedbytes.com/code/readability-score/

• Know your limitations! If you’re not a good writer, be aware of that fact and get help from a specialist – if you need a copywriter to help you convey your message effectively, then use a copywriter – it probably won’t cost the earth and you may reap the rewards many times over by improving the enquiry rate from your website.