Wedding SEO from the Original UK Wedding SEO

A Panda, A Penguin and Some Cookies

WeddingSEO — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 23:21:38 +0000

Over the past few weeks there has been a fair bit happening in the search world and if you haven’t heard from me it has been because I have been busy in the bat cave trying to work out what the effect of these happenings is going to have on your websites and the SEO efforts that are being put in.

There have been a stack of updates on Google over the past few weeks that will have a knock on effect to your website plans and the way you go about promoting it. Now before I mention these, when we SEO types had a bit of a moan at Google for these changes we got told to basically shut up and go somewhere else if we didn’t like it. So it is now time to button up and start playing by their rules 100% or suffer in the future. So we are going to take you through the updates and how we are going to counter the effects with you.

Panda Update
The original Panda update (one of the many ridiculous names Google give their updates, see the next one for proof) back in February 2011 had a major impact on websites with low quality content on their websites. Stripping away a lot of article sites with low quality content and as such removing the web listings for a majority of the web pages that these articles sat on. This also had a knock on effect of the links that were on these pages were also discounted from the link count.

To counter this building better quality links was essential and finding websites to give these links based on a number of different techniques was a good way to go around keeping sites up in the rankings following the Panda updates. However Google in their wisdom have continued to update Panda on a regular basis and the last update again killed off a lot of websites making it even harder for us to build links from websites that were once quality sites.

Penguin Update
As we lose love for black and white fluffy animals thanks to these updates, the Penguin update to help stop with black hat and web spam as well as give a boost to White Hat SEO (which is what we do for you). Now there have been techniques which I am sure you have all seen which is where an article that makes absolutely no sense gets ranked and you are left bewildered at how on earth it go there in the first place. This is using techniques called Spinning and keyword stuffing on your website or article pages.

So what does all this mean to you?
Well it means that all that advice I have been spouting about adding quality content to your website on a regular basis is even more important. It also means adding to social media websites (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube etc) is essential to help build links and social footprint into your website.

Video is also essential on an ongoing basis, Google have added a tool to direct link YouTube videos to Google+ and Google+ hangouts. So get adding your video to YouTube and distributing on other websites to help boost your rankings, try Facebook and Twitvid for example.

As always if you are struggling with content let us know and we can help you create some, we have the ability to build video slideshows quickly and easily , we have the ability to create well edited video quickly as well as the ability to distribute these videos across a wide network of websites to boost your ranking. We also have, in my slightly bias opinion, some of the best copywriting skills around with a dedicated copywriter who can proof read your own content as well as write good quality SEO content that will help you steer clear of the types of penalties that Google are applying to sites with low quality, keyword stuffed content.

And finally the Cookies.
Not really related to your SEO but more your website as a whole, there is a new directive that will be in place in the EU within the next 2 months. The directive says that you have to tell people if you are collecting data about them on your website in any way what so ever. This includes analytical data from Google Analytics and other such programs.

You will need a privacy policy on all of your websites as well as some way of informing your visitors that you have Cookies on your site that will collect data from their visit. Now this is hugely important as there will be people out there with nothing better to do with their time but report you for not having some way of telling them that you collected their data.

If you use WordPress then there is an excellent plugin from http://civicuk.com/ which you can install on your website and configure to put a small triangle and warning message in the bottom corner of your website (such as the one on here) and it will

If you have any questions about this or would like some help in adding this plugin to your website then please feel free to drop us a line through the contact page on our website and we will be only to happy to help where we can.act as a fair warning. If you are not using WordPress (What are you thinking?) then you can manually install the same code following the instructions on the Civic UK website.

I am now off to see what other things Google are up to and see some more ways our clients can go about building a solid future at the top of the search engine results.

Inbound Marketing Explosion

WeddingSEO — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 22:31:23 +0000

I tell my clients all the time to get their online social media strategy (or your inbound marketing strategy which includes a bit of everything) working for them in every way possible, get blogging and get talking to people and interacting with people on all social platforms. So when I saw this little gem of an info graphic I thought I should share it with you.

So there you go, get out there and talk to people!!!

We are going to The Bridal Buyer Exhibition Harrogate and some other bits

WeddingSEO — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:35:52 +0000

You know if you had asked me last January where we would be in 12 months time, I would never have said 4 staff strong in our own office with a whole host of amazing clients and projects, from the small to the massive. However this is now where we find ourselves and I have to say even though things are crazy busy we are having a fantastic time with all our client projects.

In the past few weeks we have been doing a lot of work with video even to the point where we have been out filming and editing with the the lovely Pippa Ward of Wedding Ideas Magazine at the National Wedding Show at Olympia (make sure you read the Pippa on the road blog post). And I even had the tables turned on me at the Marry Me Somerset Tweet Up when the camera got pointed at me instead. Enjoy the links, me in front of the camera is a rare occurrence.

That brings us nicely to the main reason for this post. We are also very honoured have been asked by our very good friends at Wedding Ideas Magazine to be with them on their stand at the Bridal Buyer Exhibition in Harrogate from the 11th to the 13th of March. So you will be able to grab me (Steve) and get some help and advice on your website and even find out how we can help your business grow through using your website and the power of SEO and social media.

I will be on stand A41 with The Herd for the whole show so if you have that burning question that you really want to know the answer to then drop on buy and with a bit of luck I will have the answer for you there and then. I have to say I am very excited about having the opportunity to meet so many of you who have chatted to us and become our friends over the past 14 months.

See you on stand A41!!

UK Wedding SEO a Year in Review

WeddingSEO — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:17:39 +0000

As many of you know UK Wedding SEO has been running for a year as of the 11th of January but as 2012 draws to a close I wanted to just give you all some idea of what we have achieved this year so far with only 2 weeks to go!

Our Team Has Grown

Yes we went from being a one man band to expanding out to having a team of three! Yes the one man and his dog experience lasted until September this year when we were joined by our PA and assistant Tiana as well as Hannah who is taking on Website Design. It doesn’t stop there as during 2012 the plan is to expand again with some more bodies on the SEO team to ensure we continue to give the best service to our clients and get them rankings, traffic and clients.

Website Design
Website design hasn’t been a major part of what we were planning to do with the business but I have to say it became a massive part of the business this year. We launched over 30 websites this year as well as helping a number of others with their website designs as well.

When you think that this wasn’t part of the original plan launching over 2 websites a month has been something that we are very proud of and seeing the businesses that we have launched for progress and get amazing comments about their sites as their businesses grow has been very rewarding.

Site Reviews
When I realised that not everyone was able to afford an SEO package I introduced the site review to our services. When I did I had absolutely no idea how popular they would be and how much of an impact that they would have on peoples businesses. So much so when we ran a contest last year for someone to win a site review the winner wrote to us telling us that the website traffic had gone up over 50% in 2 months.

During the year we have carried out over 50 site reviews for our clients totalling over 275,000 words.

Search Engine Optimisation
The core of what we do and I have to say the rapid growth of what we have achieved this year. With 26 monthly clients on SEO contracts we are working on a daily basis to make sure that our clients get the benefit of our SEO skills by having activity going on a daily basis.

During the year…..

We track over 1000 keyphrases daily
We test over 10,000 pages of our clients websites and sites they have content on daily.
We have built over 45,000 links
We created over 10 hours of video and distributed it into over 200 hours of video online.
We have clients ranked number one in Google UK for over 500 keywords that we track.
We have over 5000 tracked keywords on the front page of Google.
We have six clients as finalists for major awards in January.
And to top it all Steve lost 5 stone in weight and ran a half marathon!

All of this and we still have 2 weeks to go!!!! Exciting things to come in 2012 as well….

New Dedicated Web Design Agency
SEO Hints and Tips Videos through the UK Wedding SEO site
Mobile Application Development for Small Business
Moving to New Offices
And somewhere Steve is going to find the time to run the Paris Marathon (all 26.2 miles of it)

So as always to quote someone I can’t remember “It’s gonna be a hell of a ride and we would love to have you along with us!”

Happy New Year everyone may it be successful and full of laughter and fun the whole year long!

A Merry Christmas to All

WeddingSEO — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 12:54:59 +0000

Merry Christmas to all our clients, friends and followers, wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a very happy new year.

As a quick Christmas offer anyone quoting “Bah Humbug” when placing an order for a website, new SEO package or site review before the 24th of December will get a 15% discount on the normal prices (valid for the first 2 months of an SEO package).

Fetcham Park Tweet Up Review

WeddingSEO — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:57:36 +0000

Last Thursday evening I have the privilege of talking to a larger audience than I was expecting at the stunning Fetcham Park for the Weddings in Surrey Tweetup event organised by Pamela Wallin and supported by Wedding Ideas Magazine. During the talk I covered a number of different subjects all to help people with their SEO and increase their ranks.

So a quick overview of what I talked about is below and I hope it helps.

Having a nice looking website

Now Google allows you to preview your website before you even visit it, it is important that you make sure that your website looks attractive on the eye. Other wise those that are searching for your website can view your Google preview and that could put them off straight off the bat. This means that you might end up being ranked number one and getting no traffic what so ever. This also reduces your bounce rate (where people arrive on your site and leave without actually doing anything.).

So good site design is becoming more and more essential to getting traffic through to your website.

Website Navigation

If your visitors get lost or stuck in a loop they will get frustrated and leave your website. For this very reason it is extremely important that you have good navigation on your website and you are sending them in a very logical direction to not only get to the goal that they are trying to achieve but what you are also trying to achieve.

This also helps the search engines get to what they need to see on the website as well, meaning that you are guiding the search spiders (no not the crawly kind but the program that looks through your website for the search engines) to exactly where you want them to go as well. This is the sign of a well structured website and will help all your pages rank and get you a better ranking.

Your Visitors Own Your Website

I got a few strange looks when I mentioned this one but I have to say it is the way things go. If you honestly want to make your web strategy a success then you need to think about what your visitors want to see on your website when they visit it will be much better for your business long term. Here is the thing, as much as YOU love your website and it does everything YOU want it to do, your visitors (your future customers) might not be getting what they want from it.

The knock on effect to this is that they go somewhere else or are frustrated before they even get around to contacting you. Hand over ownership to your customers and clients by talking to them and finding out what they were looking for when they were looking for you online. A little research in this area goes a very very long way.

Use Video on Your Website

I was helped with this bit on the evening by Mark Hammett (from Blue Dragonfly Films) who is a Videographer and the only videographer that was there on the evening. Youtube was purchased by Google, in turn that pointed towards video being very important within the search results and that it would become a ranking factor.

Your videos need to be informative and of a half decent quality but you can make use of tools available to you to produce them if you are worried about being in front of the camera. For those that are brave enough to get in front of the camera just talk naturally as though you would to a client (a bit like when you write a blog post) and you will get your message across clear and easy.

Once you have your video post it on Youtube or Vimeo and then embed that into your website using the code they give you (compete technophobes please ask your webmaster or designer to help you with this and the next bit) then once it is embedded you will be able to create a video sitemap. Now for those of you using WordPress this is really easy you can install the Video Sitemap Plugin which will build your sitemap automatically. Then you submit that sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools (You do have an account with them don’t you?), then Google crawls your website and your video is visible to the search engines. If you build links to the page with the video on (by getting it tweeted and posted on Facebook etc) then you will see the benefits.

Google Plus Business Pages

The Google Plus social network is going to have an impact on search! Google don’t bring out sites or buy sites that are going to be ineffective in helping your website in some way. In this case the social footprint of Twitter, Facebook, Youtube (yes it is a social network as well) and Google Plus are becoming more and more important within the search algorithm.

If you haven’t got a Google Plus account then you need a Google account to get one which you can sign up for one here and then once you have your Google Plus account on the menu bar within Google Plus (could be left or right depending which way the wind is blowing on that day) you will see the button to create your Google Plus Business Page.

Some examples of good branded pages are:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/111883881632877146615/posts

https://plus.google.com/u/0/110356773655474889799/posts

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107515167440777049832/posts (Top Tip Like This to get SEO Tips from us in the future EXCLUSIVE TO GOOGLE PLUS FOLLOWERS)

Google Places Rankings

This was probably the biggest pleaser of the night and seems to be a big Holy Grail of a lot of people at the moment and rightly so. Your local visitors are in many cases the exact audience you are looking for and in many cases people prefere to deal with people close to them geographically in order to get them the best possible service.

In order to get good Google Places listings there are a number of things that you need to do:

Claim your Google Places page
Add a land line to your listing if possible (if you haven’t got one or don’t want to publicise your home telephone number then services like Smart Numbers allow you to have a number diverted to your mobile)
Get an physical address in the location you want to be found. If you are aiming at getting ranked in Manchester and live in Cornwall then getting listed in the Google places pages is going to be very difficult (well impossible unless you know tricks no one else does). Virtual offices can act as a god send if you are really trying to branch out and want to expand further afield. (Virtual office addresses cost money but long term it will benefit if this is the route you wish to choose).
Add your website to the important local directories such as BrownBook.net and FreeIndex.co.uk and make sure the information you are posting in ALL directories is the same. If you call your company “Wedding Company Ltd” in one and “Wedding Company Limited” in another then that is something completely different in the eyes of the search engines.

Following these steps will help you get a higher ranking in the Google Places pages. Extra Tips will be available on our Google Plus Wedding Circle so if you like our page and send us a message then we will make sure you are in that circle.

Use Twitter To Boost Your Traffic and SEO

Making friends and influencing people is what good business on Twitter is all about. Lets face it there are people on there who spend an awful lot of time chatting but at the same time they have a lot of followers and as such carry a lot of authority. So who wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who could retweet your business message just because they like your products and you have made conversation with them, rather than just randomly asking someone with a lot of followers to retweet your message?

Talk to people and share information and advice, also NEVER be afraid to help someone and offer them information it will come back and benefit you long term.

Guest Blog to Increase Your Authority

There were a number of bloggers at the Tweet up, well there were once I had asked who had a blog on their website, although it was the full time ones I was after. These full time bloggers have a great deal of power online and their websites become very well known with a great deal of readers. So having your company or your product or even information that you provide on your blog you will gain authority links into your website along with the power of being on the blog itself and the visitors that brings you alone.

HOWEVER please bare in mind that they cannot feature all your work, you need to target the blogs that are best for your product that your target audience is looking at. Choose carefully and make sure you read the blog and become a regular commenter and contributor by making helpful comments and you will then stand a better chance of getting somewhere when you contact them to ask if you can guest blog post for them.

When guest blogging make sure you keep your content to the highest quality and completely unique to their blog or it will not get published.

When the Camera Lies! Photographers Need to Add Text

Oh the groans when I mentioned that a picture can’t actually speak a thousand words! However it is true the search spiders rely on you to tell them what is in an image using the Alt tag in the image code (you also need to create and submit an image sitemap which again if you are using WordPress comes with a very handy plugin). BUT text is the best way to get your blog posts to rank better for you.

Your text needs to be around 300 words (500 if best but 300 will work) and it needs to be friendly and written towards your visitors rather than the search engines which will mean you keep people on your website for longer.

I think that has covered everything, if I have missed anything the please feel free to drop me a note steve@ukweddingseo.co.uk and I will write a backup post to cover that as well. I hope this has helped everyone.

The event was incredible with an amazing show of talent on show from all areas of this wonderful industry. I want to extend my thanks to all that participated as well as all those who attended. If you did attend and would like us to take a sneak at your website and send you a five minute overview of our initial thoughts and some tips on how you can improve your site and your SEO then please fill in the form below and we will send this to you within the next 10 days. (please note this is only available to those who attended the Tweet Up) Oh and please feel free to share this with as many people as possible.

You Can Now Google + Your Business

WeddingSEO — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:46:46 +0000

Yes it has been coming for a while but the thing that business owners and brands alike that have a geek streak in them like me have been waiting for has finally come! You can now have a Google + page for your business!

Now before “certain” readers get carried away and see this as the second coming that will do nothing but help them jump up the rankings and get them the holy grail of a number one listing in Google by having a page, sorry to disappoint it isn’t going to be that easy. HOWEVER I do believe that it will make an impact if you are actively sharing GOOD QUALITY and regular information with your readers and regular clients alike.

So is it a coincidence that the pages have been released a few days after an update on Google called Freshness? Well probably not, the changes would have been planned for one reason or another. I am guessing that for those that are claiming and actively using their Google Plus Page to interact with their followers and clients!

For example, I have created a few “Circles” on my page! One is for my Facebook fans, one is for my twitter followers and the other is for my clients. Now a lot of my Twitter and Facebook followers will be the same but for my clients I can post messages on there about regular updates and testing results that bring in good results for them (Only fair they are paying for my services after all?).

So now I can hear people sighing saying “Oh great yet another thing to update on a regular basis!” well yes it is but at the same time if you use it properly to interact with your clients and potential clients it has a lot of benefits. For example anyone reading this that clicks on my Big Red Google + Button will be invited to a Q&A session within the Google + circle later this month! That is free SEO advice simply by clicking on the Google + button! (are you getting the way this can work for you yet?)

So I look forward to interacting with you on Google + Soon!

Oh and you might notice I have added a nice Facebook comment plugin to the site so you can add comments via Facebook if you want to. Just trying to make your lives easier!

It’s All About Being Fresh!

WeddingSEO — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:17:53 +0000

For my clients that are sick to death of hearing me go on and on about new content and blogging on a regular basis, I hate to be the one to say it but “I told ya so!”

Last week Google released their new algorithm update (yes yet another one) this time called Freshness (lets face it anything had to be better than Panda!). Now according to some experts this is effecting around 35% of searches (searches not to be confused with search terms).

So now when you do a search for Olympics for example the first thing that will show is information on the olympics for London 2012 as that is a more popular result than the olympics of 1900 for example.

Now as things stand we are still researching the impact of the changes that were made last week but as the weeks move forward I would expect to see that more popular search terms getting higher results in the search results. BUT HANG ON…..before you run off to update your blog with a thousand new entries for random bits of content to get you ranked for different things…as I said we are still researching what this actually means and what the benefits of this new algorithm change is.

In the mean time I still maintain that keeping your content fresh and updating your blog on a regular basis will help you in the search rankings long term. So get typing

Oh and for those attending the Tweet Up at Fetcham Park on the 17th of November arranged by the lovely Pamela at Weddings in Surrey I might reveal the findings then so if you haven’t booked to go make sure you get in quick.

Are You Needing To Update Your WordPress?

WeddingSEO — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:22:13 +0000

You might have noticed that in the past few days you have come across the yellow bar in your WordPress installation for upgrading to the new version is there and available for you to upgrade. If you weren’t aware the new version WordPress 3.2 is called Gershwin and has an absolute stack of changes from the last version. Check out the video below and see what we mean:

Now many people seem to forget that it is important when they upgrade that they make sure that they back up their wordpress installation and their database before they click on the upgrade button. This then means that they are taking the risk that their site could stop functioning properly. Not all plugins and themes are completely compatible with the upgrades.

Knowing that many of you are not completely up with the whole backup and upgrade thing we are offering a service to upgrade for you! For £25 we will back up your wordpress database, backup all your theme and plugin files for you and upgrade your WordPress installation. Should anything go wrong we will restore back to the previous version of WordPress so your website is not out of action for any length of time.

Should you wish to have us upgrade for you simply fill out the contact form below with your details and we will contact you to let you know the next steps.

Back Up Your Website Or The Kitten Get’s It!

WeddingSEO — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 00:46:36 +0000

This weekend I have spent my evenings and nights recovering a website! The client who will remain nameless on the understanding that they never ever again not listen to the advice that they are given!

So this brings me to my bit of advice to anyone and everyone who has a website not just those with a wedding website. Do not rely on your web host to create you a backup of your website. It is not their responsibility.

If you are unsure how to do this then talk to your web designer or webmaster to get information on how to do this. For a few pounds of your hard earned cash you could save yourself from a £750 bill for needing to call your webmaster at the weekend to tell him you didn’t listen to what you were told and you’ve lost your website!

Backing up is painless and there are thousands of ways to do it, some free and some cost a little cash but don’t ever take it for granted that it is included in your hosting package. They back up their servers but they will not back up your entire website for you (yes believe it or not they are two different things).

I will in a later post put some methods together on how to create a backup of your website and keep it safe but at 2am on a Sunday night/Monday morning I thought it important to get the message out quickly!