There are numerous methods a business owner can use to monetise their website beyond just using it as a way to get more customers and targeted leads. I cannot cover all of them in this short post, but to get one thinking along certain lines………

In an imaginary scenario, there is a plumber in a local area, he has a website and wants to give it direction. Of course they will want to attract as much targeted traffic they can. To do this they will need a certain amount of SEO which will obviously cost x amount of cash. This is no biggy in a way as certain costs can be shown to the accountant when it comes to paying taxes etc etc. However, why not maximise the situation for what it is and get as much as possible from the site?

Plumbing is one trade and sometimes people only do just need a plumber but sometimes they need more trades depending on the job. Of course one such method of monetisation presents itself here and this is very much in its most simplest form. The plumber could offer pages on his site to others trades people in the area for a fee. If the site was on page one this could sell it itself! Personally I think if the plumber was to try and charge £500 per year for such advertising I think it would be a good deal and how many different trades are there???  These days many people in SEO seem to charge around the £200 to £350  mark per month for local SEO service. So as low as just over a couple of grand per year! And at £500 per page x how many different trades = how much???

Or even another way let us imagine there is a beautician with a salon. The beautician has been going a while maybe and has so many likes and follows across social networks . They also have  a website they want ranked well on search engines.

Well this may seem all too simple but a while back I saw a CPA deal for a cosmetic company that paid $30 per email. So the beautician could have a  page set up leading people to the CPA deal. It could be through social networks showing a link through to a web page which would capture the email for further information on a product. The beautician could put a post on a social network maybe saying  just found some great make up or face cleaner blah blah, for more info go here. For every person who does and gives their email, the beautician will get a cool x amount of £££’s or $$$’s. This money can then be used for re investment or maybe just fun even:)

Yes there are many ways in which to monetise a site and I like to discuss them with clients of mine. SEO can be amazing it can get a site where it needs to be. However in addition to the SEO, a site can be optimised in a number of other ways, for selling, collecting leads and making money using methods like I have just mentioned.

It all helps:)

The post Help Pay For SEO appeared first on cleangreenseo.com.

Maybe the reason I do not think about these updates so much is because I myself try not put out thin content on the sites I own and manage. The feeling I have, is to deal with these updates  or have no fear just by making better content, give a site more authority. It could also be a good idea to make a  site easier to use or navigate and link wise the social links or signals help with the authority aspect too.

Usually when one reads about these updates, somewhere in the region of about 1.0% plus or something of sites in Google get impacted. Of course, that is a lot of websites, but personally I try not to lose that much sleep over it.  Panda and the more recent Penguin have caused a lot of grief for websites and then more recently the update concerning exact match domains probably did not make a lot of people smile either.

Personally I do not like to judge in life, once upon a time people were doing what was needed to get good rankings among their competition and business is business. Unfortunately many of these sites were businesses with people to support  so ……….On the upside however the SEO that has emerged in its place is in the long run much easier, by building authority and by socially getting a good following.

I guess it is a no brainer that these updates will keep coming and coming with different names blah blah. Personally and this may sound kind of daft and it is only my opinion so it is up for correction but…………sometime ago I was listening to a guy on an SEO webinar and among other things he was talking about he happened to mention that Google invested heavily in artificial intelligence. I have only got his word to take for it but it made sense to me because it seems to me that all these updates are like Google refining its thinking process. After that, I just thought to myself do unto Google as I would do unto myself! Be my best self, do not lie, be honest, up to date blah blah. For me it is a path to follow among all the updates, opinions and one click software solutions out there

The post Another Update appeared first on cleangreenseo.com.

Getting technical but not wanting to go too deep, there are a number of ways to do this. Many businesses  do what is called split testing, this is done by using alternative copy and images and assessing what variations create the most conversions and acting accordingly. A good way to split test is through CPC camapaigns! In addition to split testing, businesses in the know may also use what is called a heat map, a heat map is essentially  where data is recorded as an image or to be more  exact with regards to web pages, an image is captured and the amount of clicks will be highlighted almost like an infrared image. This is great to assess the design aspect of a web page as in what areas are the receiving the most clicks, what is grabbing the eye and assessing the percentage of traffic that is clicking where we would like them to click.

So SEO is kind of stage one, when one thinks about conversion rates one can ascertain how important optimising for sales is. Of course some websites do great but some have conversion rates of 1% and below even if they are on page one!

Beyond optimising for sales and before considering that getting it just right could be an uphill struggle that takes a whole lot of time, it is a good idea to consider the unique visitor or potential customer. As in how do they think, or maybe even ask yourself how do you think? Looking at the bigger picture not everyone is converted into  customer the first time they are exposed to something. Often it can take two, three,four five plus times before the person is converted, or until they have made up their minds. It is a  rule in business to build relationships, to build trust and it is a good idea to do this.

Considering the above it can be seen as very pro active move in online marketing to capture visitors. In reality if someone visits a site, is uninterested and decides to leave and never come back then they are gone for good. However if these visitors can be captured then a relationship between the business and potential customer can begin. Are they even required to visit the site regularly after they have been captured? As when they are on our mailing list or part of our social following then we can communicate with them at will and we can refine the process with things such as split testing our sales copy. Food for thought! The money is in the list!

The post What To Do With Traffic appeared first on cleangreenseo.com.

SEO dead? Well no, despite the major changes in the last twelve, eighteen months, Panda updates, Penguin, and recently the exact match domain and then the disavow thingy:) in the end of the day, SEO is all about doing what it takes to get in the right place and get targeted traffic to a page or site. Things have changed for sure, there is no doubt about it!  Stories go around, how freaky to be a pro SEO guy, do all the stuff that works for a paying client only to have the rug pulled out from under you. What a pain to have a portfolio of great exact match top level domains only to perhaps see the value of some or all of them drop through the floor in price all because of an algorithm change.  However, and it is a big however SEO or as I like to call it online leveraging is very much alive because the SEO landscape has not disappeared it has merely changed in a number of ways. I watched a great webinar a couple of weeks ago and the guy hosting it is seen as a guy who is very much top dog in the world of SEO and what he said made sense. He kind of finished off by saying the SEO of old was based on math the new SEO is based on marketing! How often has google said that good content will win the day? This guy went on to say old SEO is like always playing catch up, new SEO is about leading the field.

The new SEO excites me! In a way it will make things easier for everyone, content will be newer, votes will be more human, people will be taking part, the quality and value that a business or service provides will be key in the future to their SEO or website rankings. All a good thing! There is a lot of junk content online, a lot of pollution that people don’t need. The days of producing spun articles, heaps of forum and blog posts on randon inappropriate sites , .edu links from random blogs overseas linking to a plumbers website in Essex are so yesterday and lets be honest on reflection kind of stupid considering that search engines like Google are in fact so I have been told based and operate like artificial intelligence, they aint stupid!

To me,  the skill to see where  traffic is going, see what the competition for that traffic is and the ability to put something in place to capture that traffic or hungry audience, is nothing short of golden! If research is sound and if the content and product or service is good then perhaps the thought of gaming the system will soon be a thing of the past. Surely that is the intention of all these changes, improve the quality for users.

After removing bad links and so on after a drop in rankings, some may scratch their head contemplating what to do next to help things, to others what to do next would have been apparent twelve months ago. Perhaps when it comes to SEO and the future it could be healthy to think maybe don’t try and second guess something like a search engine instead consider a search engine wants to think more like us, a person. Think how a person who respects respect would think and make decisions and maybe just maybe that is the direction of the major search engine. SEO dead? No! But if anything it will demand more quality and more honesty but will no doubt provide more value and greater benefit to everyone concerned.

The post Is SEO Dead? appeared first on cleangreenseo.com.

The Penguin update was launched on the 24th of April, only a few days ago however it is really causing a stink on certain posts online. I read one last night from some dude who claims his website employs a couple of people, gives him a living, supports the family, pays his mortgage but now it has all gone in days due to the update. I saw that some other guy had even started a petition against it, wow!

Essentially the update is targeted at web spammers, low value content, paid link schemes, keyword stuffing and regarding on page factors the structure of a site has come under increasing scrutiny. Duplicate pages and so on.

So as always there are people like the cases above who have been hit hard by this and are complaining and of course there are certain people who sound like holy smart arses saying that it is cool, to be expected blah blah.

My opinion on it for what it is worth…….I kind of feel a bit of both ways on it and for two reasons. First of all in defence of such changes, yes they are intended to make search a better and more rewarding experience that is for sure, however………….It seems to me that a new change comes out, SEO changes a little because of what it demands. People quite innocently do what they are told to do and because of the competitive nature of business, of the internet they do what they have to do to get ahead. Let us not forget that low value sites can and do get high rankings through certain link building and other SEO efforts. I am not excusing this, far from it because in many ways such unfair techniques are in a way ripping people off in one form or another. However it seems to me that many people have tried to build links quite innocently and even offered value in the process, think high quality article sites, not bad ones. I personally feel very sorry for the innocent people who have got stung from such activity because at one time that was very much where the arrow was pointing in terms of getting high quality backlinks with good velocity. But at the same time(innocent people aside) spammers are a pain in the ass, they are the pollution of the online world and for environmental reasons they need to be addressed:)

The crazy thing is in my mind that Google announces something and everyone jumps in that direction, they change direction and then there is a car crash so to say. As of today, social signals are very important to search results. In fact this seems to be the new buzz for SEO. Get people talking about your site, links from FB, Twitter blah blah. You can see the logic behind this, because such signals, such votes are human…….but are they? I say this because there are ways to manipulate social media for your own gains, for the benefit of your rankings in search engines. I do not necessarily use such techniques but I know these techniques or at least where or how to do them. Of course others know this too and in time more people will and then there will be as much social media spam as there is backlink spam and so on and so on. However long down the road, there will be a car crash again I am guessing and people who have been investing man hours and cash in their projects thinking it is the right way to go will be super annoyed to say the least.

But at the same time and it is kind of bitter sweet, I guess human emotion cannot be taken into account  and things need to be done to improve things and make things more honest for people. My only gripe is what next!!! Of course I myself look at the Google webmaster guidelines and what is stated within has been Google’s Gospel for a while now however…….I am not so sure if great websites make it to the top on looks and content alone. I say this because I myself two years ago invested quite heavily in the creation of a website that to be quite frank about it was much better than any other website in the world for that particular subject and still very much is. I know this because I made it that way, I looked at what my competition would be and acted accordingly, nothing compares! However where is that site today? Well it is on page one for the main keyword a keyword that gets typed into Google about half a million times per month! It also has about eighteen million competing pages, however it is not on the top of page one, in fact it is at the very bottom……so, I could be forgiven for asking “hey,where is my commercial”. On top of this, I can honestly say that I had to get extremely aggressive early on SEO wise with the site. So for me personally it feels like six of one and half a dozen of the other, know what I am saying:))) If I had not worked on it from an SEO angle I doubt one could even find it, I mean for a while it was hanging around way back there! I have to point out also that when I was starting a strategy for that site, I by chance found an incredible website, in fact it took my breath away a bit, everything was right about it but from what I could see it was nowhere. I remember to this day how sorry I felt for the owner, it was a great site at the time!

I do not know, well in one respect I do know, I mean if a client comes to me tomorrow with a fresh plan then I have got one for them too in fact it is the same as I have had for a while now, for me kind of nothing has changed but…….I can see that some people with good sites have been hit hard.

It is one of them nothing and nobody is perfect, there is actually something about this exact website that runs foul of this new update, although to my knowledge it is not due to spam but instead something else and quite innocent too.

Yes in case you have not noticed, this site is kind of still under construction. The reason, I am always super busy with new projects and stuff. I keep making my posts though, so as to offer readers some value. If anyone reading this is keen to read more then this is a super SEO blog or here is another great blog for the world of SEO.

The post New Google Algorithm Update ! appeared first on cleangreenseo.com.

The post Interesting News About The The sites That Inspired SEO appeared first on cleangreenseo.com.

The post SEO social media and a little about Twitter appeared first on cleangreenseo.com.

So what is the story? Let me start by saying that if you have read any of my other “off the wall” SEO blog posts and if you are new to all things SEO then you would have gathered that a very important part of SEO is the initial keyword research to build your site around.

Well……guess what? Let it be known that although I am a graphic design,multimedia design and illustration graduate who has been making the most out of IT for almost 15 years, it is through my interest in business and making money that got me started in SEO. My introduction to SEO came some time ago now through affiliate marketing and all that it takes to understand it successfully!

Well of course affiliate marketing is a hard thing to get right if one is not doing it right, same as anything you know. However with affiliate marketing you have to get it spot on and then some for instance, how far down the rabbit hole can one go with marketing alone, you could find that magic bullet and then split test it even further.

Well anyway I do not want to sound like a swell head but after so long and also with a good helping of intuition, I am, I can honestly say, pretty hot at finding profitable niches despite many things being kind of tapped out.

So, back to my main reason for writing this post and also following on from the last paragraph:) Wait for it………………………..just now I found a keyword or search term that received 60,500 searches per month, the cost per click was almost £2 and happy days for me, getting on page one for this keyword did not look like it would be too much of a headache. On top of all this I did a search with godaddy and with a slight variation I can buy the exact match domain too.

Of course I am not going to reveal this keyword, why would I?……….it could be worth £100′s or even £1000′s to me every month if I do the right thing, whilst all the time being under the radar so to say. Am I happy about this? Yes of course, in fact I am pretty super stoked about it however…………Think about it, how would you feel if this was you?

Really, go on think about it,what if? What if someone approached me told me what their target market was expecting X. I returned to them and told them of X amount of other approaches they could take to get to their target market by way of search terms.Search terms they did not know even existed, among competition they need not worry about not being able to dominate online. How would they feel? How would you feel if my find was really your find? If really I had found you an easy path for 60,500 people to get to your site every month, how would you feel? Your product or service costs how much? How much even 5% conversion of 60,500 can be a lot of money depending on what you are selling.

Yes many things are tapped out online yet in many other ways a huge land grab has been and is taking place. Surely if you are doing business online, you must want some right? Well if you do, there is no time like the present and I really would like to be able to do some great things with SEO for your business. Until next time…:)

The post SEO And A New Found Keyword With High Commercial Intent! appeared first on cleangreenseo.com.

Well truth say I think it can to some extent be applied to SEO. Look what has really taken off even more so in 2011, social media plus video even seems to have stuck out more than previously.Then of course there are the massive things such as Google Panda, perhaps that will be expanded upon. This probably sounds like nothing new and I guess in a way it is not, because if you ever take the time to read up what google likes to see in a website it is fresh, new applicable content and the more of it the better!!! The social media side, the panda updates and whatever else may be coming is all pretty much towards new stuff, constant updates, new relevant blog posts, rich web 2.0 sites, video content but all being quality and aimed at the right place.Perhaps the term branding is something I should mention here too nudge nudge, you know, think about all that social stuff, fan pages what is it centered around?…….branding, just remember that you read it here first:) It sounds tough, too simple because we are all aware of SEO  and usually what it takes. But if you have quality, SEO is getting easier, what you need to do is in a way getting in our faces, just the challenge to us in SEO is how much we can best leverage the options at our disposal to pull it all off, considering the web and of course our time.

Personally I view these algorithm changes as all part of the cleansing process and I think searches are better for it, no doubt. It is just a funny one because doesn’t Google consider all SEO to be black hat, as in “you’re trying to twist the system somehow”. Don’t you just love that, black hat, white hat or maybe grey hat, someone throw me a bone here:))

Maybe SEO will not be SEO in the future, perhaps it will just be known as the art of getting it right or something along those lines.Tailor made content creators providing all we can to ensure our sites and those of our clients will never fall foul of a Google algorithm ever again. Then again, if someone wants to get to page one within 5 days to two weeks for a gig that is only going to be playing three nights in one town,  they will need someone to do the necessary 200 profile link blast or whatever other crazy cool stuff can weasel its way through google for a few days and get the traffic they want in the time frame they have.Ah so that is what black hat SEO could be really good for,yawn yawn. Saying that though perhaps Google will get even better at noticing spam backlinks, sure it will really, why wouldnt it, no brainer……Well one thing is for certain, I am sure the web will be a better place and indeed a better environment to work in throughout 2012, every year it always is.

The post Happy New Year And SEO In 2012 appeared first on cleangreenseo.com.

Yes it is true and is indeed in my opinion more than sad that Yahoo Site Explorer came to an end on November 21st. I am am pretty sure I am not the only person who is feeling this way either. Yahoo Site Explorer was just so helpful however after the 21st this great resource became part of the Bing Webmaster Tools and unfortunately for us in SEO Bings Webmaster Tools do not quite cut it in the same way, sad but true!

I suppose there could be some people reading this thinking yes I agree with you there yet there could be others who were unaware of this great tool thinking what is this all about. Well for those of you who have never heard of this great now extinct resource  let me enlighten you:)

Something I mention to people in fact rewind………….the main thing I mention to people when I chat SEO is that first of all in an ideal perfect world you need a foundation for your website. One does not want to just build a website blindly, one wants to build a site around traffic, or one wants to provide a site for which there will be a demand. Common sense,right? Or put another way, with an anology, let us make believe and pretend that we are going to construct a new town, first of all we need to decide on where to put it and only an idiot would consider putting it far away from major road systems right?Yey!

Well without blowing the bag apart here as it is a service we all charge for in this supercool world of SEO let me introduce the one time role of Yahoo Site Explorer in all of this. Us SEO people for whatever reasons ( nudge nudge wink wink) explore the viability of certain search terms, then when we get an idea of the terms we wish to optimize the site for we then need to check out our competition and indeed what our competition is made out of, what is enabling them to a large extent to rank for. In comes, sorry in came Yahoo Site Explorer! All we would do is copy and paste that URL featuring at the top of page one, go to Yahoo , type  Link: then paste the URL and bingo! We would get a certain picture which would help us to a large extent to make a calculated guess as to how long it could take you to rank given the competitions backlinks.

The post A Wonderful Tool For SEO Yahoo Site Explorer Is No More appeared first on cleangreenseo.com.