I recently came across a document which highlighted a SEO strategy for a major UK based company. Now for legal reasons I can’t mention which company it is but they are huge in the UK and their industry is insurance.

Now I work on many clients but primarily the insurance sector, which is highly competitive and very lucrative if the rankings are achieved. Most of the clients I manage SEO for have achieved top 10 positions for their keywords but there are always a handful of websites that always sit on top, no matter what.

I have of course researched my competitors thoroughly, which everyone in SEO should do, looking at their design, backlinks, content, IP locations etc. At first glance all these elements look pretty standard, not much out of the ordinary – so it was a nice treat to see how these “top dogs” have managed this.

A huge network of at least 100 websites has been created; some websites date back to 1999 so this method has been used for a long time, and has really only started working perfectly for the last 12-18 months. Each of these websites is very high quality, most of them ranking in the top 5/10 for each niche. The niches aren’t limited to one or two either, they are quite varied.

The network is made up by at least 15 different IP addresses, each providing between 4-20 websites on each, the more important websites being hosted on IP’s with the least amount of websites or even on their own.

Paid links have been commonly used on most of these websites which has added to their individual values, but here’s the sneaky part. If a new website is added to this network (which probably pays an enormous amount of $$$) then no links are bought directly, instead the related sites on the network get the links they then link to the “new site”. This means with these high quality sites only having 2-4 outgoing links, the juice is massive!

Now I know that most companies have sub departments with additional websites but this method is taking it to the next level. Literally millions of $$$ have been spent on this network but for this one particular insurance company, that price must have been recovered in a few weeks.

It’s just worth noting that even “trusted” brands that have been around for many years might not always play nice when it comes to rankings and strategies.

Firstly a brief definition on what an SEO lemming is;

“An SEO lemming is a human being whose nature it is to believe another human being because they sound like they know what they are talking about. In doing this you will be influenced in to doing anything without realising it. You may find yourself digging a hole with your bare hands for no apparent reason, building a bridge, parting with huge sums of cash to appear on the first page of Google – or if you’re really unlucky you will notice a number appear above your head and proceed counting down.”

How to avoid becoming an SEO lemming?

1. If you receive an email from an “SEO Company” with their “analysis” of your website, right click and mark as spam – exposure to such material can lead to SEO lemming symptoms.
2. If you are approached by anyone in regards to SEO without asking to be, just mention you know what an SEO lemming is and don’t want to become one!
3. You want to invest in SEO, that’s excellent news – read some trusted SEO blogs on the basics so you know what to avoid. Simply type “seo blog” in Google and choose the websites on the left of the page with a white background.
4. Understand this – SEO is a long term strategy that requires investment. If you are after a “quick fix” then unfortunately you are already under the influence and you’re an SEO lemming – watch out if you find your hair turning green.
5. If you submit a tender and you are approached by SEO companies, check their websites out. If you see any of the following phrases, please avoid;

a. Top 10 or your money back
b. Guaranteed first page
c. Only $xxx to get on Google
d. We have been around since time began
e. SEO lemmings are cool

I am already an SEO lemming – what can I do?

1. The first stage of recovery is to acknowledge you are an SEO lemming – well done!
2. If you are showing symptoms at an early stage, there is still time for you – please revert to point 3 in the section above for a minimum of 2 weeks with lots of rest.
3. If you are going to part with cash make sure you talk to the guys and question them about their SEO methods. It’s advisable that you have a sit down with the companies – this will combat most SEO lemming judgements.
4. Use your common sense, if you can remember what that is. If it sounds quick and easy it’s expensive and useless.
5. You can try denying the fact that you are an SEO lemming, this might make you feel better temporarily but this is not a long term solution.

On a side note - if you would like to play the original game:
http://www.elizium.nu/scripts/lemmings/

If you have just setup a new website or your small business has just gone “live” for the first time then I hope I can help you save money.

Once your website is live you may of course wonder why you are not receiving tens of thousands of visitors. Surely everyone needs or wants your product or service? A little rule, even if you were giving out free gold bars very few people would know about it – although I imagine your website would become popular by word of mouth - that’s a whole other story!

How do I get traffic to my awesome website?

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
2. PPC (Pay Per Click)
3. Affiliate Marketing
4. Social Marketing
5. DM (Direct Mail)
6. Email
7. Word of mouth

The bad news is that most of these options will cost you money, and to achieve large numbers of targeted traffic it will cost a lot! I will attempt to give you new websites some very basic tips to follow and implement that a lot of “SEO companies” would charge well over £1000 for.

Some basic tips

You will of course need some basic HTML knowledge for this, although some points require no prior experience.

1. Make each page Title unique to the page; keep the length to 60 characters or under. Any more and the search engines will not list the words in the results but you will see little dots…

Example:

<title>Important Keyword | Relevance Word | Company Name</title>

2. Create a Meta description that describes your page in a readable format; consider it a window to your larger shop.

Example:

<meta name=”description” content=”Important Keyword is a service or product in the keyword industry by company name.”>

3. Create a Meta Keywords tag, and include words that might not appear in your copy and misspellings of your keywords.

Example:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”related keyword, 2nd related keyword, related industry, misspelled keyword 1, misspelled keyword 2 “>

4. Make your <h1> tags contain the most important keywords on each page – only one <h1> tag per page.

<h1>Keyword</h1>

5. Make your <h2> tags contain your less targeted keywords

<h2>Less important keyword</h2>

6. Give all your images “Alt” descriptions, these should describe the images perfectly

<img src=”imagelocation.com” alt=”Keyword in a situation” />

7. Create an XML sitemap

Visit: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ - to have one generated for you

8. Submit your XML sitemap to each webmaster console

Google - http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
Yahoo - http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
MSN - http://webmaster.live.com/webmaster

9. Submit your website to a list of trusted directories. A good list can be found here:

http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories/

10. Make any links on your site include keywords rather than “click here” or “read more”

<a href =”URLdestination.com”>Keyword</a>

The list above is just some basic standards to follow. Of course if you have a good website built for you then some of these will not be an issue, you will be surprised though.

Find some free backlinks

It amazes me how lazy some people are, I see many “SEO companies” charge anything between £50.00 - £1000 just for 250 backlinks – these often tend to be non-relevant so actually do very little for your search rankings.

This is how I find relevant backlinks, granted it may be time consuming but it’s cheaper or often free and the results actually work.

1. Go to http://www.linkdiagnosis.com/
2. Enter a competitors website
3. Look at the results

You will often find free resource sites and directories that carry some weight using this tool. If not you will see where “the enemy” are getting their links from – which you can follow.

You can also use another tactic whereby you write comments on blogs that count as backlinks:

http://www.dofollowblogs.com/
http://www.digeratimarketing.co.uk/2007/07/20/over-160-relevant-link-following-blogs/

To finish this post off I will just add a few more tips, more server side that are always recommended. I would guess for sure that if you implemented all I have listed here, a new, un-optimised website would benefit from it (I guarantee that some SEO companies will charge well over £1000 for this sort of work)

Final Tips

• Implement a 301 redirect on your domain, if you do not know how, visit the link below:

http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php

• Make sure your URL structures contain keywords:

Example: http://www.yourdomainwithkeyword.com/productnamewithkeyword

SeoUnique has reached a point where I am looking to expand it’s horizons by looking for additional bloggers to join the team. SeoUnique has been live for nearly 12 months and has its foundations in place to provide Internet Marketing insights for its readers.

Potential Candidates:

1. You must list some previous SEO posts you have written or contributed to

2. Blog posts must be on the subject of SEO, SEM and Internet marketing

3. You will be asked to post at least once a month, this will give you an opportunity to generate your own reputation

4. You can be of any age, as long as you show maturity in your writing style, of course it can be fun!

5. You must know how to work with Wordpress

Apply Here 

Bloggers will be announced as soon as they are chosen

Thanks

As you will all know by now yesterday saw the third PR update in 2008 and we are only in April. The majority of webmasters will care more about SERPS more than PR but if you monitor your site enough you will see some correlation involved.

A few months ago I entered the “Yicrosoft Directory” competition at SEO Noobs dot com, although I didn’t win I implemented a some standard SEO practices on a standard Wordpress theme and built up under 100 backlinks with 3-4 variations of anchor texts.

Now what is strange is that on reflection on the new update I looked at my site which I hadn’t touched in months or even accessed. To my surprise the little green bar was displaying a PR4, I then proceeded to look at the PR for the top 4 sites under “Yicrosoft directory” and their page ranks were all 4-6. Quite high I’m sure you will agree for websites that are only a few months old about a subject that was made up. This is also not the first time blogs and websites have received high PR updates on young domains.

Now what I believe Google to be doing here is ranking based on an industry level. Say for example you want to rank for a competitive term such as “bank loans” – you may have a 3 year old domain, 50k backlinks and an SEO friendly website, however you still only have a PR of 3 or 4.

Matt…what are you talking about – explain yourself immediately?

Ok, stay with me here – If you have a new keyword phrase, as we all played for (Yicrosoft directory) then out of all websites competing for the term the distribution is shared.

For example:

“mortgages”
• Position 1 - PR 6
o Backlinks: 3 Million
o Domain Age: 2001
• Position 50 – PR 4
o Backlinks: 6,000
o Domain Age: 1996

“Yicrosoft Directory”
• Position 1 – PR 6
o Backlinks: 2,000
o Domain Age: Feb 2008
• Position 50 – PR 2
o Backlinks: 273
o Domain Age: Feb 2008

I know I have only used 4 examples here but you can see the PR’s match but what doesn’t match are the backlinks and domain ages.

So I guess what I’m trying to explain here is that for your website to rank well in the SERPS and achieve a high PR in competitive industries is a lot harder than on less searched terms. Although this conclusion is far from revolutionary, it does explain why new websites and blogs are ranking highly in Page Rank. To me this indicates the up most relevancy and value of a link to your industry or service, random PR links may not be as valuable to you if they are not directly related.