This is a difficult question because it all depends on what ‘well’ is. Most websites have some half-hearted attempt at on site optimisation, but often that’s just about as far as it goes.

So, before you speak to anyone, here are four suggestions from us which will help you understand if your website really has had a good start.

So, How can You Assess if Your Own Website is Optimised?

Here are our five best SEO tips that anyone can use to help them understand a site is well optimised:

1.Check Your Page Title – Homepage First, Then Other Pages

Go to your website homepage. Look up, above the content in the page to your tab bar (or top of the window in older browsers) and read what it says.

If your page title just says your brand name, or ‘Home’, or has text with nothing in particular to do with your business, then the chances are your site is not optimised.

As a second check, look at other pages on your website too. They should have different text, related to the content in the particular page, and relevant to your services or products.

2. Check Your Page Headings

The main heading in every page should be tagged as a ‘H1′. Again this is a technical term, but is important as Google sees this as the most important written content in the page, and therefore this heading should carry the most relevant keywords for your page.

To find it for your website, right click on the page and choose ‘View Source’. Once you see the source code, search for a word or words in your heading on the page to find where it is. Then look at the code ‘tags’ either side of the heading. Ideally they should say <h1>. If you can’t find them, the chances are they are images and will not be fully read by Google.

For example this page has this:

<h1>Check if Your Website is SEO Optimised</h1>

3. Make Sure Your Images Have Relevant ‘Alt Tags’

Google knows that every image placed in a site has some kind of relevance, but generally only looks at two things: where it links to (if it links at all) and the ‘Alt Text’ on the image.

So, for example, if you look at the above image in this page, then you can see that it’s ‘Alt Text’ is: ‘Is Your Website SEO Optimised’ which is relevant to the page it is on and not just ‘screenshot’ or ‘image’.

4. Make Sure There’s Keyword Consistency Across These Items

Once you’ve looked at all the above for a particular website page, then you should be able to answer a simple question.

Are these keywords consistent:in the title, in the headings, on the images and in the page content?

If not, then it may be that your site is part-optimised or the content writers have not liaised with the website developers.

5. Write a Decent Length and Write Good Copy

Finally there needs to be enough written content on the page for it to be fully indexed. If you want a page on your site to gain strong rankings, then it needs to have at least 250 words in the page. Less than this and the page will not carry enough weight.

However, write it properly. Don’t just stuff it full of phrases and keywords in the vain hope that it will perform for you. It has to be well researched and written. Pages are also checked for grammar and ease of reading and if your page is poorly written then it will suffer as a result.

Not only that, but if a page does get good ranking and traffic, then it needs to perform for you. If it’s poorly written then you won’t get the conversions you need.

As we look ahead, we’ve spotted six things that anyone involved in digital marketing should take note of… here goes:

1. Mobile Finally Delivers

It is common to get premature in excitement over new technologies. For example: the dot-com bubble was burst on the delay between the promise of the eCommerce revolution (2000/2001) to the actual fulfillment of that promise (from 2004 incrementally to today and beyond).

The same is true of mobile – yes, we’ve all replacing our old titchy ‘just call and text’ handsets with funky new smartphones for the last 3 years or so, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s an immediate payoff.

Expensive data plans, clunky interfaces, steep learning curves and lack of confidence in security has meant that many have not used these devices to their fuller potential. Now, that has changed. The devices are better, the pricing is much more competitive, the user-experience is tight (and not just the Apple iOS platform any more) and social media is driving increase in use.

Here are some stats for you to consider. By the end of 2011 these were the stand out numbers:

• Over 30% of emails are now opened on smartphones / tablets, over 50% at weekends (evenings)
• Over 40% of posts to Facebook are from mobile devices
• When incorporating tablets into ‘portable PCs’, Apple will become the world’s biggest portable PC supplier (volume and turnover)

If you have not planned for the mobile revolution then make sure you do this year. Ideally this quarter!

2. Bing Comes Second… A Good Second!

And that’s no bad thing when position one is secured by Google. You can be sure that Microsoft are going to be pressing hard to increase market share but their merger (read: takeover) of Yahoo! Search and Search Marketing, plus their ‘relationship’ with Facebook means that Bing has got a bright future and enough traction to take an increasing share of the advertisers’ buck.

3. The Social Backlash

There is no doubt that Social Media continues to gather steam – growth, use, time on site – whatever metric you want to use, it wins.

There is no doubt that IF you want to engage, speak with, understand better, relate to you customers and prospects, then Social Media is an excellent place.

However, where there IS doubt is how brands, products, services and companies can make this work to their advantage for two main reasons:

• Lack of imagination: we don’t know how many businesses do this, but many have the ‘Field of Dreams’ approach to their Pages (‘build it, and they will come’). Er – no they won’t… build it, put no creativity thought into it, and they won’t come. And for the few that do will leave. This is a social media, you need to think socially
• Narrow focus: you cannot treat social media like direct marketing and measure response and revenue out of it. If you do it this way you will fail for too many reason to mention in this article (TBC at a later date!)

At the same time, these principles need to be accepted: a ‘Like’ is worthless unless it becomes a ‘do’, impressions on your social pages are worth less than impressions on your own website, social media advertising is patchy at best (particularly LinkedIn) and the true cost of social media is the time spent managing it.

So the social backlash will mainly consist of businesses who thought (or were persuaded into) that either it would be self-fulfilling, or that it’s a straight marketing tool. Or, it may be that you have outsourced it to incompetents.

4. Companies Will Work Even Harder to Ringfence and Reward their Clients

It has always surprised us how little SMEs work to support their existing client base and reward them for their loyalty. Given that we can expect another challenging year, the competitive business will work as hard as possible on their existing contacts and make sure that they retain custom from as many as possible.

The smarter ones will also use techniques to use their existing customers to leverage further opportunity.

This will be the opportunity for true CRM – the management of actual customer relationships through a combination of media, not CRM as Salesforce describe it (sales channel – CRM with a silent ‘relationship’).

5. Limitations of Automation Will be Revealed

We get approached by many agencies purporting to have automated various things – from pay per click performance, to email response. All offering, for a monthly fee, to make our lives easier.

For the buyer this is serious compelling as the more automation, the cheaper and more scalable the services are. So, if it works then quickly, with little staff resource needed, then the benefits are clear.

However, the main question is: ‘is it better?’ And we believe that for marketing – the answer is a firm ‘no’. The main reason being that strong marketing needs two things: creativity and market knowledge. Give us a strong ad copywriter any day over an automaton: better copy, better click through, better quality score, lower spend, improved performance.

So, if you buy into automation, be very careful and test against a ‘human managed’ (ideally experienced) alternative. You may find that the only thing you’ll be scaling is your losses.

6. Performance of Apps Will Come Under Scrutiny

We’ve always maintained, when approached by clients wanting apps, that this is no gravy train… in fact, far from it, it’s more like a Ponzi / Pyramid / MLM scheme where the winners are deliberately PR’d to create the illusion of success. Yet, Apps are a thin layer of great success, covering a very deep ocean of failure.

Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon will court you, create a convention just for you, present bold plans to you, bring you into their carefully controlled circle and, if you’re very lucky, even get you a signed Zuckerburg t-shirt.

What you have to remember is that they’re taking about 40% of everything – and every app ties your users into them (as much as you, of course). So, the more apps they have, the better their reward and, actually, it doesn’t really matter which ones make it.

So, you can see why focusing on Rovio (developers of Angry Birds) and not the 100,000+ other games that die a death hides the true picture. Recent research suggests that the average Game in the Apple App Store takes £4,000 in total revenue to the developer, and games is supposed to be the most successful category.

So, we wish you all the best for 2012 and if you want any advice or help, then please call 01962 605 000 – we’re more than happy to have a chat.

All we can say is: the end can’t come soon enough. The clunky interface was delivered late and was dated even before it was birthed. Little was done to improve it, and as Google evolved and Microsoft entered the market, there it stood, stuck in time.

However, that was just about bearable as long as the performance worked. But, as the months went by the slide continued… 20%, 15%, 10% … now about 5% of Google’s reach.

Yet, this article is not about that… What has become increasingly unbearable is the active encouragement of click misbehaviour on Yahoo’s part. We won’t use the word ‘fraud’ for fear of litigation – but let’s call it click ‘flawed’.

We give you a tale of increasing desperation which has led to the final insult as Yahoo! enters it’s last days.

‘Off Site’ Advertising

It all started with the ‘Content Network’. The aim was simple – a search engine only has a certain amount of traffic, but by allowing other sites to carry pay per click advertising then there was more opportunity to earn.

Both Google and Yahoo created ‘content networks’ (Google’s was renamed ‘Display Network’ a couple of years back) where website owners could carry their adverts and earn from clicks out from visitors to their sites.

Naturally, the traffic from these sites wasn’t as valued (or as valuable) as clicks from search and therefore both Google and Yahoo! (and subsequently Bing) enabled advertisers to set a different bid level for Content Network clicks.

Everyone’s a winner, aren’t they… ?

The Start of the Slide

However, it wasn’t really fair. Google with a larger market share, better advertising technology and more marketing muscle (and brains) was soon able to offer third party sites much easier integration, more transparent reporting and, ultimately, better returns.

Few sites remained in the Yahoo! content network. So, Yahoo! did what seemed to be the honourable thing – they shut the network.

Well, no, they didn’t really. They just closed ‘that which they call the content network’. And then they expanded their Search network to include ‘partners’. But didn’t inform advertisers – after all, a search partner is still a search supplier, aren’t they?

And advertisers wouldn’t really know the difference…

And Google was doing it, weren’t they?

When is a ‘Search Partner’ Really a Search Partner?

Well, Google does have ‘Search Partners’, BUT there are a few important points to make about the Google Search Partner Program and what it means for advertisers:

1. You can choose whether or not to advertise on search partners in any Google campaign
2. You can easily split out and report on performance of search partners with Google
3. You can easily list those partner sites which are not working and delist your advertising on them
4. Google police their search partners very carefully and only deal directly with the partner site themselves

However, whether under-resourced, or underhand, Yahoo! didn’t really do any of these things. If you advertise on Yahoo! search, you get search partners and can’t choose not to advertise on search partner websites. The reporting of the search partner performance is difficult to split out and compare, listing the different sites is awkward and then you have to de-list them one-by-one.

And, the final straw, they didn’t police. At all. In fact, they did the opposite they aggressively promoted themselves to try to build their network. Not just directly to sites, but also through third-parties.

How do we know? Because we’ve been approached by many intermediaries who re-sell Yahoo! search partner status and then target whatever phrase you want – or rather, whatever phrase they want you to carry (for maximum revenue).

Watch Your Yahoo! Spend Closely

Suffice to say, as the final termination approaches, they have become more and more lax and Yahoo! is in a mess. We’ve had two clients who have been hit by sudden surges of clicks with absolutely no reward or positive outcome.

So, watch your campaigns closely, particularly any in which you’re bidding a decent amount. If you see sudden spikes or sustained surges in traffic, please investigate thoroughly… and if this article has tipped you off, please share it: others need to be wary.

We all want competition to Google, we want a competitive marketplace, but for months Yahoo! has been playing a dangerous game – biting the hand that feeds it: the advertisers. We will not forget.

And, because of recent experiences, as one of the last agencies with advertisers on Yahoo!, we’re more than happy to switch the lights out. In fact, they’re going out early.

We’ve already covered some of the pitfalls in our first two articles: never commit to a monthly SEO contract and 5 critical keys to managing your SEO supplier. These give you the groundwork to understanding SEO better.

In this article we now give you the ammunition to manage your SEO supplier (rather than them running rings around you).

Before we start… important note… to make this work you need analytics. We’re working on the assumption that you’d choose Google Analytics, but any analytics package which can measure visits and search terms for those visits will do.

In fact, even more importantly, do you like driving with a blindfold on? No? Then get some analytics and then look at it regularly, or just give up on your web marketing!

So, onto the job in hand… Steps 1-4 can be done before the SEO visits, steps 5-6 in negotiation to reach agreement.

Step 1: Measure Your Brand Visitors

Firstly, importantly, identify searchers for your brand or sub-brands, or people working for your business. for these two reasons:

1. You will come top for this without ANY help from a SEO, and
2. They are not ‘new’ business as they have heard about you before

Step 2: Measure Your Current Organic Traffic

Secondly, identify your latent organic web traffic – the number of searchers who are already visiting your website (this will be your total organic traffic minus brand searches from above).

Step 3: Value a Visitor

This is very easy if you’ve done any Pay Per Click (Adwords) marketing. If you spend on clicks you will, almost certainly know what the cost is of your average visitor, if not, then  estimate what a visitor is worth to you.

Step 4: Target Relevant Keywords

Using your analytics and through your own business knowledge, you will know what keywords and phrases are relevant to your business. You will also see from your current analytics that you do get a number of visits on rather spurious keywords. So concentrate on keywords which are relevant and are likely to bring in relevant visitors.

Step 5: Meet (Suitably Prepared) With Your SEO

So, when you go to meet your SEO, then you can have a proper discussion with them. Set the ground-rules:

• All brand searches, past or future, are not a part of the SEO’s service, so when it comes to performance, these will not be included within the SEO’s measurements
• Your current organic traffic is where you are today. Again, the SEO has not contributed so they need to improve on this and should be measured on the improvement over your current visits and not be given credit for your current ones
• Any non-relevant keyword visits will be ignored as these are ancillary to the job in hand and a good SEO should be able to get you ranking for relevant phrases

Listen carefully to their reaction to these items. These are all fair, they won’t like it, but they are fair! And hear from them how they are going to go about gaining you extra traffic.

Step 6: Agree Targets with your SEO

You will then be able to give your SEO a target: tell them that your ‘break even’ SEO performance for you is their fee (almost certainly monthly) divided by your average cost per click.

For example, if they want to charge you £300 a month, and your cost per click estimate is £0.50 then they will need to give you 600 additional visits a month to break even in terms of performance.

If they cannot commit to this, then it speaks for itself: they are not able to deliver you enough traffic volume to cover their fees. Therefore they should not be appointed.

Step 7: Measure, Measure, Measure

We would support any SEO in two respects: firstly that improvements don’t happen immediately, and secondly that there’s no value in a ‘free lunch’ – you have to pay as you’re expecting them to work hard for this, probably harder than they do on most of their clients!

Tell your SEO that you will give them a three month trial to get to this target figure of monthly visitors from their work, and that you will pay them during this trial. If they achieve your target then you will continue working with them, if not then the trial is over.

Furthermore, tell them that once they’ve achieved this target you will be expecting further incremental improvements until they at least double this figure per month – because one of the myths of SEO is that your need to continue spending to maintain your rankings. This is barely true and only in a select few competitive business areas. If you cancel the contract, unless they have been using ‘black hat’ techniques, your ranking should be maintained.

As you measure your visits in analytics, you should start seeing improvements in SEO within a month and, even if your SEO doesn’t hit the full target, if they’re close then you should give them the benefit of the doubt… if they’re a long way short, either renegotiate until they hit the target or cancel.

In this way, you can manage your SEO rather than letting them run rings around you.

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Here are five ways to make sure that you can manage your SEO and ensure they’re going to deliver for you.

1. Don’t Focus on Position

Do not, we repeat, NOT, fall into the ‘Page 1 of Google’ trap. This is usually the domain of the lazy SEO. They will guarantee a first page position and, as soon as they get it for you, they’ll down tools and just bill you monthly.

Getting a page 1 position is easy. What’s hard is getting it for a high traffic keyword. Most SEO’s who play the ‘Page 1 trick’ won’t like questions such as:
“How many people search for that a month?” (you can find this in the Google Keyword Tool), or
“How much traffic will that get me a month?” (the answer can be found in your analytics software)

So, don’t focus on position, focus on traffic.

2. Relevance is Everything

One of our clients had a blog post which was all to do with mouse pointers, but which was nothing to do with their core services business. They got to page 1 and had about 10 visits a month from people interested in mouse pointers.

One of our more popular posts about Tree Surgery and Leylandii (there is a connection – it’s about valuing your clients) and we’re position 8 on Google UK for ‘Leylandii Tree Surgeon‘ – do you think that’s relevant to a digital marketing agency? Will that position win us business?

Here’s another ‘classic’ illustration:
We pitched a business who targets central London clients with a top tier professional service. We explained why SEO would not work for them – the local ‘expert’ (ahem!) wanted to rank them for ‘[Professional Service] in Hampshire’.

OK – so that’s a ‘triple fail‘. Why?

1. Because their target market in London won’t search for Hampshire
2. Should potential clients visit the site, they would be put off with Hampshire being plastered everywhere when they want services delivered to them in London
3. This particular keyword phrase has fewer than 100 searches a month (across the UK!!)

So, make sure the keywords you rank for are relevant! Make sure that your SEO supplier knows your business well.

3. SEO is NOT Free

You pay for SEO. It is not ‘free’. It has to be measured in exactly the same way as other forms of marketing.

4. You Can Stop Your SEO and it Won’t Damage Your Rankings

If you use a SEO supplier and they ‘threaten’ you that everything will crash and burn if you stop using them, they’re wrong. Very little if anything will happen (positively or negatively) over the course of time.

If, on the other hand, you do see your rankings being badly affected, then it’s almost certainly because they were engaging in underhand methods to boost your results; trust us, you’re best clear of them anyway as you were probably a blacklisting candidate (where Google pushes all your positions down, say, 30 places for as long as they feel like it!).

5. Be Reasonably Patient

Your SEO will tell you that it takes time for Search Engine rankings to materialise. That is true – give it 1-2 months, possibly three. No longer than that… if your SEO is playing the ‘time’ card after 6 months: give them a red one!

We hope this is all useful stuff, please share this post with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ … we’ve made it really easy for you: nice chunky buttons below! And if you want us to help you evaluate your SEO, then talk to us today.

You May be Told that Your Site is Only the Start

For many businesses this is not true – you may get a high or page one ranking just by doing ‘on site’ optimisation and never need to do anything further.

If you are a niche service, or already have a popular website with a good number of inbound links, then further link building may not make a huge amount of difference.

You May be Told that You Need to Spend to Retain Rank

For most online rankings, again this is not the case – once rankings have been achieved they are relatively self-sustaining and by focusing on improving content, your site should retain it’s position.

If it does require further work then this should be done – but on a more ad-hoc basis rather than every month. And you need to set clear parameters for your SEO supplier to meet (number of links, increase in traffic etc.).

To give you an idea, here’s a popular site where we have done no SEO for the last 18 months… does that look like a downward trend to you?

You Will be Told That Link Building is Crucial

This was the case when the only off-site measure was inbound links. But now it is less so.

Google and others take a great number of metrics into account when they evaluate the SEO of a website and it is likely that as their measures get more advanced, then they will be less interested in inbound links.

In any case, the number of link-builders who can’t even get the basic ‘on site’ optimisation right is eye-opening [and if your SEO doesn't even talk about your site, then you can be certain they don't know what they're doing].

Your SEO May ‘Front-Load’ Their Effort

If you commit to a monthly fee, your supplier will front-load their effort. Possibly just do some on-site work and very little link-building and then reap the medium and long-term rewards of doing very little (if anything) for you.

Important Note: This is not true for ALL businesses.

There are some types of site where ongoing spend will work. If the category of business you are in contains really high traffic search terms and valuable keywords (like ‘Car Insurance’, for example) then it is worth spending to stay at or near the top.

However, for the vast majority of businesses, despite all the promise, SEO is not the key to unbridled success – it’s just something you should do well on your site and seek other, more profitable, revenue generators.

If you want us to show you more evidence, please contact us, or call 01962 605 000.

This is true when it comes to social media too. With Google+ just about a month old, we’ve seen the two common responses you’d expect from this kind of launch:

1. The Enthusiast: your typical ‘early adopter’… just sooo excited by this new entrant that they’re gushing about anything it does
2. The Critic: much keener to take a contrary position and to be perceived to be knowledgeable precisely because they aren’t excited about the launch, they prefer to criticise from a distance

And, in Google+’s launch these have been polarised. The enthusiast talks up adoption rate, invites friends, promotes through other channels; the critic avoids at all costs and, often, hasn’t even tried the service in the first place.

However, in the instance of Google+ these two positions are both supportable – because it’s not going to ‘beat’ Facebook or Twitter, it’s just trying to carve it’s own furrow. Some will use it, some won’t – but the effect it has on both Facebook and Twitter will be measurable and long-term.

So, who should be most nervous about Google+?

In our view it’s Twitter. Why? Well, for two main reasons:

ONE: Because it is struggling under an ocean of mainly junk and drivel content. We love Twitter, but it’s just ‘overdose’ and as it grows in popularity, things get worse. But Google+ can do what Twitter can do in a much more managed way. Following is just one small part of Circles and Circles is way better than Lists, and

TWO: Because there’s little else to it – it’s simplicity is also it’s weakness. Whereas Facebook is a hub of social, sharing, gaming, commerce, etc. etc. etc., Twitter is just bulk communications with a little one-to-one interaction. So, if Google+ does things better than Twitter, it has nothing else to fall back on.

Will it mean Twitter disappears? We think that’s unlikely, but I’m sure there will be some furrowed brows at Twitter HQ as Google+ develops. Our view is that 100m accounts will be the key tipping point to volume communications getting going in Google+ (estimated to happen Q4 2011).

Note to Web: Google+ Hasn’t Even Got Going Yet

Google+ is still in a managed roll out phase. You can’t sign up directly – you need to be invited. Recently our personal account was limited to 150 invites and no more.

Not only that, but the linking of search to social is much easier for Google to do given their dominance of the former.

Also, Google is holding back on various roll outs we can be certain are coming:

• Business pages: which we’re confident will be better connected with Search and Advertising than Facebook or LinkedIn’s clumsy efforts
• Realtime search v 2.0: why hook up with Twitter or Facebook when you have your own platform? It comes with a massive search volume that blogs, merchants, advertisers and people want to get in front of
• All the other Google services: they’re not quite tied up as yet, but things like Google Docs will add some very interesting spice to the mix
• Mobile: Hands up who’s got a mobile platform AND a social network? Precisely!

Wrap Up

Google has had two failed attempts at social – Wave and Buzz. Wave was let down by difficulty in access / promotion and also being before it’s time – it wasn’t easy enough to comprehend and use, yet we will see Wave functionality but in other forms (like Docs). Buzz was just a weak attempt at ‘doing Twitter’. However we believe Google has learned from these two mistakes by developing an accessible and user-friendly platform which improves on what’s out there.

It’s not really Twitter or Facebook. It’s email 4.0… the start of proper unified communications that non-users can plug into (thus the need for a Gmail account). The trend is clear – email’s popularity is on the wane and social, chat and messaging is taking over – and Google+ is right in this space. And, as first efforts go – it is very good!

‘It’s even better and it saves you time’ goes the Google Inc. mantra, yet we’re not convinced. Not really that sure at all.

At best it’s a ‘because we can’ approach to generating a little more publicity (if Google did, indeed, need that) and differentiation from the competition – because from what we can see, the only thing it does successfully is to distract as you type!

But, as always, we need to be careful not to pre-judge. Google has the sleight of hand of a magician – as you watch the bunch of flowers, the other hand is doing something a lot more interesting.

The ‘billion dollar’ question is:

“How does it affect Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click marketing?”

In the short term, on sites we work for, there is little effect on traffic. Levels are about the same as they were.

This doesn’t mean, however that there is no impact. We need to recognise that only a proportion of searchers are using it (you need to be logged into your Google account and be using Google in the browser window, not from the toolbar), and it will take time for those using it to adapt to how it operates.

Our view for what it’s worth is that it is mainly a defensive manoeuvre from Google because of two areas of weakness.

Firstly, whilst the top 3-4 results on a page have traditionally been strong, the rest is increasingly being filled with makeweight sites who are strong in SEO practices, but weak in valued content.

Secondly, because the web is placing more emphasis on recency of content and social networking, Google is also trying to set the ground for a more immediate experience.

Google is also setting the scene for what we’re confident is a tightening on Pay Per Click. They have been generous in offering a ‘long tail’ for a period of time, but all this means is that the yield is on average lower from the page as less valuable adverts are clicked.

Expect them to start shortening the list of advert results and also by encouraging searchers not to finish long-tail searches, they also are hoping that users will click on the more competitive, higher-traffic terms.

Let’s see how the rest of the year pans out. Will Google make all searches Instant? If they can, almost certainly they will!

The ‘Con’ First

Often you’re led to believe that getting to page one of Google is ‘it’ for a reasonably specific keyword phrase, and that you should pay for this privilege. But, almost certainly this is not a cost-effective route, particularly if you’re paying a monthly fee. Here’s an illustration for you:

SEO Firm offer:
“We can get you onto page 1 of Google for a relevant phrase for only £79 per month”

The Maths

They write copy for a single page on your site, and optimise it for you (cost to them – £50 copywriting, £30 to research, ongoing cost – negligible). They choose a reasonably relevant phrase for SEO purposes but one without much competition. Total Cost £80 covered by the first month’s fee you’ve already paid.

Your page is likely to get indexed on the first page of Google and they start to bill you. They can pretty much sit on their hands for the next 2-3 years without doing anything and your total cost will end up being about £1k a year!

So, what do you get out of it… let’s say that the phrase gets 1,000 searches a month and you’re in position 5… then you probably get about 1-2% of the click throughs, so say 15 visits a month.

You’re actually paying, therefore, about £5 per click through… but you’ll be reassured that all is well because you’re on page one!

How to Value SEO – Our Tips

1. Get Analytics installed on your site. It doesn’t have to be Google Analytics, but if you’re not sure then use Google as it’s pretty comprehensive and free of charge. Without analytics, you won’t be able to measure your traffic and where they go to and come from. You are flying blind!
2. Work out what a site visitor is worth to you. It is easy if you already perform Pay Per Click as you will have a good idea what the average cost per visit is to you for relevant phrases. If not, then you need to work out what value you get from visitors – what is your yield per visitor? If you still cannot get a handle on this, then ask us to value your search engine optimisation and well help you find the right cost.
3. Target specific, relevant phrases. Make sure you are not led by the SEO Firm, they are there to serve you so make sure that the phrases they’re working on will work for your website and are as relevant as possible to your offering.
4. Measure only your incremental improvements. If you have an established site, then don’t let the SEO claim all your natural traffic – make sure you measure the improvement they made to your visitor numbers and website traffic. Also, make sure they don’t claim brand name searches for your site – as you should come top regardless.
5. Then measure the SEO on performance. Now that you’ve done this, then the rest should become clear – the value of the work performed for your is the incremental traffic which you can attribute to the SEO multiplied by the value you put on an additional visitor…

And there you have it. If you want any more tips, we’re more than happy to discuss your requirements. Just get in touch with Ergo. Call the Online  Marketing Specialists on 01962 605 000, or email in.