At the start of any SEO campaign selecting the right keywords is the most important step. If you choose the wrong keywords, you simply won’t succeed with your campaign.

When selecting campaign keywords you need to consider: What, where, how and why.

• What is my main sales proposition?
• Where am I located in Google and the country?
• How good is my current website and how much history do I have?
• Why am I considering optimising for that keyword?

.Ideally you would start with a targeted keyword that is exactly what you do, what you offer and where you are located, for example if you were a “luxury hotel in Devon” that also offered spa treatments you might consider “luxury hotel in Devon with spa”.

Your first step would be to establish what the potential traffic of this keyword is. To complete this action go to the Google keyword suggestion tool.

If the above keyword had limited to no search volume, then is it worth optimising? Arguably yes, you want to show for exactly what you are, treat it almost as your brand keyword, that with good content and a well structured website you should appear in the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) with minimum effort. Yes, it will have a low click level, but your conversion should be a lot higher the average.

In using the tool, “country house hotel in Devon” was a search suggestion with a search volume of 250 per month and when placed on exact match it had 140 ASV (Average Search Volume). This keyword should be another to consider, but it’s not going to Wow. Therefore, you need to look at more generic keywords.

Consider looking at generic searches, for example, “Devon Hotel”, “Devon Hotels”, “Country House Hotel”, “North Devon Hotel”, complete a Google search and find if you already have a ranking in the top 100. This is a simple task by simply changing your settings to 100 and using the control F function.

If you find your website ranks for “Hotel in Devon” in 63^rd position with no optimsation this keyword would be a good starting point for any SEO campaign. The hardest challenge is always to get a website to rank within the top 100 places, if you are already there, you have an advantage.

Finally, review the competition ahead of you, identify your main competitors and set SMART objectives.

SEOmoz Linkscape tool is part of the armory of most SEO companies. Linkscape allows you to put definable metrics on incoming links, DmR, mR, DmT. The team at SEOmoz has now developed a new tool on the back of linkscape called The Competitive Link Finder.

It works by comparing you to your competition. You simply enter your URL and compare it against your competitors. The Competitive Link Finder then reviews all the incoming links to you and your competitors website and produces a targetable lists of linking websites. This list is normally 1 - 25 and ranked on SEOmoz factors (DmR, mR, DmT,)

It works by identifying websites where you are not found, analyzing link metrics and then producing a list of target links, it is that simple.

The tool ignores nofollow links, so you’re only seeing pages that have actual, live links to at least two of your competitors.

I came across this new SEO tool called Exact Factor.

Its promises to check positions on the major search engines, and alert you when you have reached the top 10 positions, including

• Your position is up/down
• Your competitor has passed you
• You reached the first page in Google

The website is easy to use and navigate with a simple structure, its not trying to make the service it offers complicated.

My problem, how is it checking listings, and with Google policy on 3rd party software, where does Exact Factor sit within the market place. My big question is will clients I sign up be penalised in the search results?

I do feel it is important for the team to check and monitor there competing keywords in Google. This strategy allows you to keep a close eye on the competition and notice small differences that could make a huge difference in position, and is Exact Factor the answer to helping the team?

I am currently testing on a old website, and will let you know what the results are.

Tom

I came across this social bookmarking service from a webmaster forum and the social bookmarking service is called post toaster & is currently in beta stage.

Looks impressive and has been built with SEO in mind. Post Toaster is a time saving social bookmarking service which includes an option to select sites that do not support the nofollow attribute.

How to use:
Click on the lion logo above and drag and drop into your toolbar. This is your Post Toaster bookmarklet for easy posting. When entering titles and descriptions you can enter up to four of each. Post Toaster will randomly pair them for you within each submission. You must check the checkbox to the right of the title and description fields to activate your data.

SEO

For the full link please see www.posttoaster.com

Good Morning

There is a common belief that when you check Google backlinks using info:domain Google is showing all the links that influence its rankings. Unfortunately not the Google backlink checker is not a SEO Tool and it does not display all links that weight its algothrithm.

Please see below:
1: The Google backlink check is not an SEO tool.

2: The backlink search does not represent the sum total of all links that Google knows about your site.

3: The backlinks shown do not represent links that are counting as part of your backlinks.

4: Just because it shows up in the backlink search does not mean Google is using it for your ranking.

5: Just because a backlink is missing does not mean Google is unaware of it

6: Just because a backlink is missing does not mean Google is not counting it for ranking purposes.

In my Position as Manager I would like to welcome you to South West SEO.

Today, clients are more demanding then ever with online marketing. This drives online marketers to push harder then ever to deliver; otherwise the client will take their business to another agency or bring it in house.

This is very true currently are where we are with SEO or as I prefer Natural Search Optimisation. My goal as the manager is to deliver for our clients.  It is that simple; deliver or lose. This constantly drives my philosophy, in this ever changing media you have to adapt and grow to constantly meet the challenges of Google. Unfortunately, it’s a never ending process.

However, as an agency we have to work to standard principles, common protocols and best practices; then tailor these to the individual clients. We work across sectors from travel, finance, Health and insurance implementing common rules across sectors and different competition levels of optimisation is the hard part, what works for 1 client will not always work for another.

Then this is where the hard work comes in delivering more for less is not profitable, but to deliver and maintain the relationship with the client sometimes I have to authorise additional work. The relationship with the client then is maintained and the business maintained

I believe the only way to SEO success is unfortunately hard work. Writing good website content, that content being relating to the keyword you are trying to target, relevant incoming links from resource type website.

The biggest debate at the moment is how you get these links and do you pay for them? The answer is at the moment part of your optimisation strategy will always include paid links, even if it is the form of paying a directory to review your website, paying for a link by the back door. I have nothing against this and as part of our company strategy we have a large list of high value website that involvement payment.

SEO secret: no guaranteed number 1’s, no special submission to 1000 + websites. Hard work and time. Sorry if you were expected a free lunch.