This selection of SEO charts and diagrams, compiled originally by Pamela Vaughan over at Hubspot , is great for if you are trying to get your head around search engine optimisation.

You may want to leave the 'doing' part to the professionals but these charts should certainly help you to understand how and why SEO can help your business' digital marketing strategy.

Cycle of Social & SEO by TopRank Online Marketing

This short video from Google's 'Google Business' Youtube channel shows you how to implement Google's free conversion tracking,which allows you to see which AdWords clicks led to a valuable action on your website, such as a sale.



Further resources:
What is Adwords Conversion Tracking?
Conversion Tracking Installation Guide

The video below does a good job of explaining what Google Webmaster Tools are and how they can help you to optimise your site for search.




Case Study:  Using Google's Webmaster Tools

This video demonstrates how to utilise Google's Webmaster Tools to get an insight into how Google views the pages on your site. Use the various features of this tool to ensure that the most important pages on your site have the best chance of appearing in Google's search results.

Links are one of the key components which make the Internet work, and when it comes to your website, linking out to another person's site is like a vote of confidence. A link to a site says to the world: "hey, look at this site I found you should check it out too". Indeed this is one of the cornerstones of the Google ranking algorithm. Sites which have more links from relevant, high-quality sites are likely to be ranked higher in the organic results. However, there may be times when you want to link to a site which you don't trust, or you don't want it to be seen by the search engines as a vote of confidence from you.

What should you do then?
The rel="nofollow" is a HTML attribute that you can add to a link which traditionally is put in place to tell Google that they shouldn't follow that link. This means that Google does not place any trust onto the page being linked to. Realistically, Google may still follow the link but by using the attribute what you are really saying to Google is that you don't want to be associated with the content on that page.

So when might be a good time to use this?
The best example is that of links in any blog comments or forums which you run on your sites, or any section of User Generated Content (UGC) that you have. It may be impractical for you to monitor every link which is placed by a user on such areas of your site. Many blog platforms will have this function enabled by default, but it's certainly worth checking.

The good thing is that this amendment to the link will not affect the way the link works from a human users perspective, it's just for the benefit of the search engines.

This link would appear as Example which to the user looks like a regular link, but the nofollow attribute tells the search engines not to assign any value to it from your site.

Other resources:

• ·         Google Support
  

Google released its advertising platform back in 2000. Over 10 years on it has evolved and matured into a sophisticated search marketing channel. It is a common misconception that PPC (pay per click) spend affects your organic rankings; that in some way a paid advertiser is likely to see a boost in their organic rankings. Although this is not the case, what you can learn from your PPC campaigns can give you valuable insight on how to optimise and promote your site in a way that can improve its organic performance.

When Google ranks its PPC ads it considers several factors including:

• Quality Score - this includes keyword relevancy and ad click through rates.
• First Page Bid - Is what Google estimates you would have to pay to be visible on the first page of search results. This is determined by your keyword quality score.
• CPC - how much money you would be willing to pay per click which is determined by the user who sets up the campaign by considering the first page bid.
  

Google considers over 200 signals when ranking pages within the organic search results. These signals constantly evolve and change on a daily basis but major signals include keyword relevancy and its placement within your content.

Some examples of where PPC and SEO activity can work well together:

• Keyword Research - transfers very well between PPC and SEO.
• Ad copy optimisation - where copy is successful in PPC campaigns you can transfer that knowledge to optimise pages for organic search.
• Landing page strategy - PPC people think about landing pages almost exclusively in terms of conversion. SEO people think about landing pages almost exclusively in terms of search engine ranking. By combining the two approaches, you could end up with the perfect landing page - one that ranks highly and converts.
• Quality score - This PPC metric can act as an indicator of how relevant your webpage is to a certain keyword or phrase.
  
• Mitigation of risk - if a page drops down the organic search results, PPC can bridge the gap while the organic performance is being addressed.
• Traffic forecasting - PPC search ads are a reliable way of forecasting how optimising against a particular keyword might perform in terms of traffic and conversions. So wherever an organic search forecast is needed, PPC can act as a reliable predictor.

Previously Imran has spoken about how to best optimise your title tags on your pages. Today we're going to look at how you should formulate URLs to maximise their value from an SEO perspective.

Firstly though, I should start with a small caveat. This blog post is aimed at how to build search friendly URLs in the first instance. If you have a number of pages on your site already, you shouldn't necessarily make wholesale changes to URL structures without considering how you will manage this so that your site continues to work properly, as your pages may already be ranking well in Google. We'll cover this more advanced topic of redirects in a later blog post. For now, let's just stick to the basics and approach this from the perspective of a new site build.

The key point to remember is to keep your URLs simple but descriptive. We want the URLs to reflect the content of the page so that they are easy for users to understand at a glance. So long as the content of the page is of a high quality, it may encourage people to link to your site (which is an important ranking signal in SEO) and a logical page structure will also allow Google and the other search engines easy access to all of your content.

So for an example here we have a homepage, a category overview page and then a specific page:

www.example.com

www.example.com/category-name

www.example.com/category-name/specific-page

Q: Should I use pipes or dashes to separate content in my title tag?
A: Google will identify both as separators so whilst you may not see an impact in your rankings, you may consider running an A/B test to see how it affects your click through rate.

Q: Is there an optimal title tag length?
A: Many SEO experts will recommend using fewer than 70 characters ( including spaces) as this is what most search engines display in their search results.

Q: Can I use special HTML characters such as &, <, >, @ etc in the HTML title tag?
A: Yes, you do not need to encode them using named or HTML entities as these may appear in the search engine results. It's advisable to avoid special characters where they do not add value or use up unnecessary characters. 

Q: How long will it take before I see the title change in the search results?
A: There are unfortunately no guarantees and you will have to wait until your site gets crawled and re-indexed. This can take hours or months depending on factors such as the size of your site, how often you update your content etc.

Q: Do the search engines always display the title tag in their search results?
A: No! The search engines occasionally devise their own listing title by grabbing  content from the page. They can also use content within the DMOZ (Open Directory Project) listing if your site has one.

Q: Can I force Google to use my HTML title tag in their search results?
A: No but you can add the following to the <HEAD> section of your code in order to encourage them not to use the headline and/or description from the DMOZ listing:
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOODP">

Again, speak to your developer before making this change!

Q: Can I get a list of un-optimised title tags?
A: Sign-up to Google's Webmaster Tools, verify your site and it will provide you with a list of pages it has detected that have:

• Missing title tags
• Duplicate title tags
• Long title tags
• Short title tags
• Non-informative title tags

The Title tag is your opportunity to highlight what the page is about to both your customers and the search engines.

It is important to remember that HTML title tags are not only used by search engines as a ranking factor but are commonly used to link to a site from the search results.

 What is a HTML Title Tag?

The title tag is displayed in the Title Bar, at the top of the browser window on most browsers and can be found in the <head> section of your webpage's source code. Ask your website developer if you are unsure how to add or/modify this.

When your users add a page from your site to their favourites/bookmarks, the HTML title will be the default title saved in their favourites list unless they manually change it.
 
Most large content management systems and blog platforms will use the title tag as the main heading of the page by default, but many also allow you to change either.


10 Ways to Optimise Your Page Titles for Search Engines and Users

1.    Make sure the title tag is unique and descriptive on all pages. Avoid repeating the same title tag on every page of your site. Search engines use the title as one of the principal ways of working out what a page is about, so duplicating titles across multiple pages that have different content could confuse the message and lead to some of your pages not appearing in the search engine results at all.

2.    Include keyphrases in the page title that describe the products or services you are offering on that particular page. The page title on the homepage can include your main offering/online value proposition.

3.    Do not try to rank for generic, singular keywords like hat, car, magazine, event etc. Try to  discover the terms that your potential users are searching for and reflect them in your  page title. Lengthier search phrases are commonly known as "long-tail".You can use your analytics data and or Google's keyword suggestion tool to do this.

4.    Try to place your keyphrase first and your brand name at the end of your title using the following format:


Some SEO experts suggest that repeating your brand name on every page in the title can dilute the focus on terms you are targeting, so you may choose to limit this to key pages like your homepage, about us page etc.

There may be some instances where you would like to optimise products that include a brand term. Including these in the title and content on the page may help you rank for those terms above e.g. price comparison sites, third party distributors etc.

5.    Use brief but descriptive text in your title tags. Do not stuff your title tags with a list of keywords separated by commas!

6.    Ensure the keyphrases you are targeting are included in headings and text on the page. Again do not stuff or repeat keywords in your content for search engines. Ensure the text reads well and is written in continuous pros.

7.    Avoid targeting the same phrases on more than one page or using repetitive keyphrases in every HTML title tag, on every page. Try to be as accurate and descriptive as possible, highlighting the key topic of the page.

8.    Keep it short (under 70 characters), informative and highly targeted. If it's too long, Google will only show a portion of it in their search results.

9.     Spell check! This seems obvious but remember this may be the first impression a potential customer will have about your site.

10.     Test and Tweak! Look at your conversions as well as your rankings. Modify until you are happy that you are achieving the best rankings, getting a good click-through rate and attracting the most relevant users.

Pay Per Click or PPC has played a major part in changing the face of advertising. It can guarantee you a place in the search engine results pages, and for businesses keen to show a tangible return on their investment, crucially it's measurable. Advertisers who have spent years trying to determine how effective their magazine advertising spend is now have the opportunity to mitigate the risk of online expenditure by being able to plan, build, launch, adjust and measure their campaigns with relative ease.

But is PPC something that every online business should engage in? As with every form of advertising you must ensure you are getting to the audience you want to attract - anything else is a waste. Before you decide whether PPC is an attractive advertising channel for your business here are some fundamental steps to consider:

• Are you ready? By posting an advert on a search engine results page you will provide a link to your site. Is your visitor going to land on a page that is directly related to his query? Make sure your site has landing pages that are set up to receive visitors making it easy for them to complete the action they want to.
  
  
• Do you know your audience? Do your research to find out where your potential customers are, and check that they commonly use search engines to find your services. An analytics package installed on your website will give you valuable information about what search terms your visitors use.
  
  
• Before you consider PPC make sure you have looked into optimising your site for organic search visitors (SEO). Spending time on SEO is an ongoing commitment but should be a fundamental investment in any commercial website and may prove more profitable in the long term than PPC. It not only helps your site's performance in organic (free) search results but it creates a site with well-focussed landing pages and concentrates on providing a positive user experience
  
  
• What are you trying to achieve? Have a clear idea of your goals and optimise your campaigns to fulfil them
  
  
• Do you have time and resource to manage a PPC campaign? As with any marketing activity costs can spiral if your campaigns are not monitored and costs controlled. A well-managed PPC campaign includes ongoing keyword research, landing page optimisation and ROI analysis.
  

There is no doubt that for many businesses PPC is a successful marketing channel, but investing time into preparing the ground is well worth the effort.

There is a whole host of information about PPC on Google. Check back here too for more blog posts on PPC in the coming weeks.

In this flow chart, PPCblog.com illustrates ' what we know so far ' on how Google works. Detailing how Google gathers its data and how search results are then generated and displayed it is a nice insight in to the business of search.

Click to enlarge: