Bounce rate - an important metric in SEO

One of the most common questions concerning measurement of web site activity is what is Bounce Rate and what does it mean?

Put in very simplistic terms, the bounce rate percentage is the number of people that have visted one page on your web site, and then leave. This may be for any number of reasons, but the bounce rate metric is especially important if you are trying to engage your site visitors and want them to visit other pages featuring product / service information and promotions.

Why do people bounce from my web site?

There are a number of reasons why people might contribute to a high bounce rate. The first of which can be poor keyword choice in your SEO campaign. If you are optimising your site for the wrong keywords then your site visitors might be landing on your site and not finding what they expect.

Another reason might be poor web site navigation. Maybe they find your site easily on the Google search results, but once they hit the landing page (the page on the Google link) they cant find an easy way to view other pages on your site.

Do you offer external links away from your site on your landing pages? If so, these can be a contributing factor to increasing your bounce rate. Consider your external links carefully.

If a site visitor leaves your web page open for 30 minutes, and takes part in no further SEO activity then this can be recorded as a bounce. Even opening a new tab in their web browser can classify as a bounce. Visitors may do this if they need find an explanation of a term or phrase on your web site using another method such as Google or Wikipedia. This is a great reason for making sure you right top content for your site.

To quote Google.com itself

“It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.”

Sometimes, it can be difficult to get to the bottom of why your bounce rate is so high, but in time, with some careful attention you can help to turn it around. Recently, we noticed that a client was optimising their Google PPC campaign for a huge array of keywords, and since refining them and doing a bit of keyword research they have reduced their bounce rate by over 45%.

How can I improve my bounce rate?

» Check out the content of your web page. Is it self explanitory?
» Are you optimising your site for the right keywords? Is the content on your web page relevant to those keywords?
» Can people easily navigate around your web site? Do you need to consider a new menu structure?
» Do you have external links on your web page inviting people to leave your site? Remove them!

Bounce rate is an important metric in any SEO project. eSoftware Solutions are a UK SEO Company, based in Staffordshire. For more information visit our web site or call Ian on 0845 838 8588.

Twitter is severely misunderstood!

I get alot of questions at the moment about Twitter and how it can help people to promote their business. I’m finding that the main problem is that many see it as just ‘another’ social media site and as such seems to have a damanged reputation (without having been tried & tested) based on peoples views of Facebook and My Space.

First of all - let me tell you that Twitter should be an essential part to every one’s online marketing campaign. If you haven’t yet got a Twitter account - sign up right now!

So what is Twitter?

Basically, Twitter is a micro-blogging site which allows people to easily write very short (140 characters) posts, visible to people who are ‘following’ them. You can view our Twitter feed here.

Why do people use Twitter?

Twitter is a tool that allows you to build a network of ‘followers’ (contacts) to share information. This information can be absolutely anything you want. You can tell people what you are doing (although I wouldnt recommend telling people ‘I am typing on Twitter’!), you can promote your online services, alert people of interesting blog posts and news articles and much more! Generally people ‘follow’ you on Twitter because you have something in common, so you are ‘tweeting’ to a targeted audience. The more your Twitter network grows, the wider the audience for your ‘tweets’

A simple and easy place to start is to create a simple feed on Twitter and publish all or at least some of the most interesting new pages on it. Note that the URLs will be shorterned to stay in the 140 character limit!

Twitter should become a place of interaction between you and your clients (and potential clients). It was recently reported that Dell made $3m dollars by providing discount codes for their followers to purchase computers and laptops online. With this is mind can you really afford not to spend a few minutes a day ‘tweeting’?

For more information on how Twitter can help with your online marketing and search engine optimisation, or how we can manage your Twitter account and Tweet on your behalf, contact eSoftware Solutions, a UK SEO Company, on 0845 838 8588.

Optimising your Blog posts for SEO

It's been a lovely weekend here in the UK, almost 'Summer like'. It's been an opportunity to spend a bit of time outdoors, something us brits dont get chance to do that often! A whole two days away from the screen explains the lack of recent activity on the blog, but I hope you find this latest post useful.

You will hear from many Search Engine Optimisation professionals, SEO Web sites and forums telling you that Blogs are a great way to create relevant back links to your web site through regular posts. There are many free blogs out there, both hosted and available to use on your own servers. The most popular blogging software is WordPress.

Here are some tips to help you optimise your blog posts for SEO.

1. Use Permalinks for your URL structure. Permalinks include the title of your blog posts in the URL (with hyphens replacing splaces). This flags for attention when Google is crawling the site.

2. Make use of H tags in your posts. Where you can use the Heading1, Heading2, Heading3 etc tags when writing your posts. As with any SEO content the search engines value the text in these tags and see them as an important part of ranking the page.

3. Dont stuff your blog posts with keywords. Make your blog posts interesting and relevant. Remember that you are writing your blog posts for humans to read. Make them engaging - offer readers tips or advice. Google likes human readable content!

4. Dont stuff your blog posts with links. Typically try to use about 5-6 links, all to different pages - maybe even some to different web sites. Your links should always be anchored on your the keywords that you are optimising you target site on. If your blogging software allows, aways make use of the Title tag on your links and include your keywords.

5. Dont forget to register your Blog URL with the Search Engines - and also register it with Blog directories. If you are writing good content then people will link to you, your Page Rank will increase and your outgoing links will become more valuable.

I hope you all have a good week. If anyone has any other tips on blogging for SEO then please feel free to comment!

Google Squared - more relevant and organised results?

Searching for anything on Google is now much harder than it was 5 or 10 years ago. This is due to the ever increasing amount of content on the internet.

Google Squared seeks to add another dimension of structure to the wildly fluctuating net environment. By analysing, structuring and categorising web pages, Google Squared claims to be able to provide more relevant content.

Current Google results are currently based on keywords or phrases. This method is open to manipulation by optimising sites, both internally and externally for these phrases.

Google Squared builds on the tradition of providing quality content by sorting resources available on the SERPs. According to a source, Google Squared will provide "squares" - small window-like features in the browser - which represent web pages. Each square will be categorised graphically based on search results.

What does this mean for SEO's? Will we need to adapt new techniques and methods to help our sites rank high on the results? Initially I envisage that the concept of content being king will utimately prevail and the new Algorithms put in place have been developed to cover the weaknessess of the current search patterns. Does this mean that link building will become a thing of the past? Will Search Engine Optimisation become a thing of the past and the focus shifted to internet marketing / social media channels promoting "Content"?

What does Google think about SEO?

I've been watching the Rome Masters Tennis this afternoon, and as their is a rain delay I've decided to blog on a recent thought of mine.

So what does Google really think about Search Engine Optimisation? Strange question? Not really.

Google serves a purpose, it has a job and it has responsabilities. People trust Google to deliver relevant content to their search criteria. They rely on the leading search engine to give them content that relates to what they are looking for. It bases its results on the relevance of content within a web site.

So what does it think about SEO? There are millions of web sites out there, of which a huge number are all related in terms of topics, products and services. Many companies and SEO's are frantically working away to get good links back to their sites through articles, directories, social channels and link exchanges (by this of course I do not mean the black hat link buying or selling). So as an SEO, are we basically tricking Google into thinking that sites are more popular than they really are? Are we manipulating the search results in such a way that Google would prefer us not to - and in which case are all techniques apart from content building really black hat?

Interesting thoughts for a Saturday - now back to the Tennis as the rain covers are coming off.......

Localised Search - are you missing out?

Many companies look at Search Engine Optimisation as a way of bringing in more enquiries / sales for their business. It is widely known that search trends suggest that anything page two or beyond on the search listings hold very little value, and the ideal place for any business is the top 5 positions on the first page.

But are you targetting the right audiences, or are you missing a trick. As the WWW provides companies with global reach, its sometimes easy to forget your local clients. This is where localised search can help.

More and more, people are using search engines for local services. How is this done? Just by adding a town or city into the search phrase!

So if you are a London based courier company, you should absolutely be considering SEO for key search terms like London Courier, and the chances of you getting good listing are much higher than simply optimising for Courier!

Still not convinced? We have just launched our 6 month localised SEO package so why not get in touch us (info@esoftware-solutions.com) to find out more about localised search.

Optimising your keywords and phrases in the Title Tag of your web page

Choosing the right keywords for any SEO Campaign is absolutely essential. The keywords create a foundation on which the entire project is built.

But once you have your keywords what do you do with them?

The Title text of your web page is what you see in your Web Browsers address bar. This should be a short, concise description of your web page and should be no more than 100 characters in length. Many SEO’s beleive that the Title tag is THE most important part of the page in terms of web page optimisation, although that could be disputed.

You should always ensure that you are using your keywords in your Title tag, and that you have formatted it correctly. Where possible seperate your keywords using a comma or pipe ( | ) symbol. This creates a definite break in the Title tag text so that the search engines know its the end of the word or phrase. For example:

Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing and Web Design

Is not a good way to format your Title Tag, where as

Search Engine Optimisation | Internet Marketing | Web Design

Is the optimised way to format your Title Tags.

You will see that the optimised way to format your Title Tag removes any unnecessary words - how easy is that!

A well optimised page can see your (established) web site shoot up the rankings by hundreds of places in a space of 48 hours. For new builds or immature domains you may find this takes longer as Google builds up a trust relationship with your site.

Now I make it no secret that I am not a big fan of Pay Per Click marketing - not only because I believe it is open to abuse but I also don’t believe in people forcing web sites to the top of the search engine listings via payment. For me it defeats the object of the search engines providing results that are relevant to the search string.

What is Organic Search?

Organic Search results are presented in the main left hand area of the search engine results page and are generally ordered by relevance and popularity as seen fit by the search engine provider. It should be every web site owners aim to get listed, at least on the front page, of the organic listings and it can be very rewarding. In 1998 Google was born, and through providing good quality, relevant organic search results it quickly become the search engine to use. To this day, people often say that if you aren’t listed in Google then your web site effectively is invisible. The beauty of organic search results is that no company can buy the top listing, it’s purely the determination of Google which sites appear first for any given search term. This is, in fact, the core of Google’s business. If they ever stop providing good relevant search results, internet searchers will go somewhere else to search.

What are the advantages of Organic Search?


You don’t pay per site visitor – Visitors that find you through organic search results are totally free, so there’s a very high return on investment those clicks.

More Click throughs – More searchers click in the organic search results than the Pay Per Click adverts, so a #1 ranking in organic will bring you more targeted traffic.

More Trust – Most searchers trust Google, therefore a number one organic ranking is the ultimate trust mark for your web site.

Less Long Term Investment – The initial investment in an organic search campaign depends greatly on the competitiveness in your industry. It’s important to think of it as a long term investment. You won’t see immediate results, but by investing a little time and money each month, you can gradually build your site up to attract loads of free targeted traffic.
Disadvantages of Organic Search

Ranking can take time –You may start seeing noticeable traffic increases within a few weeks to a few months. It all depends on the competitiveness of your industry.

Requires Investment in Your Website – Getting a result in the organic search listings can require a large investment in your time in preparing content and working with your Search Engine Optimisation Company. You may also find that you need to invest in the layout and design of your web site to create call to actions on your pages and make the most of your enhanced search result positions.

What is Pay Per Click?

In the Autumn (fall) of 2000, Google announced their AdWords, do-it-yourself pay-per-click advertising system. The system revolves around bidding for keywords in an attempt to show at the top of the Pay Per Click sponsored listings. This method of Internet Marketing relies on budget and is often open to abuse.
Advantages of Pay Per Click

Whilst not a fan of Pay Per Click, we concede that this method of Internet marketing can bring near instant results.


Disadvantages of Pay Per Click

It can be expensive - If you are in a competitive industry you can find that your costs start to spiral upwards at an alarming rate.

Once the funds stop the listing dissapears - If you decide to stop funding the advertising it is removed instantly, as opposed to the organic listing which would have a longer shelf life.

SEO - The value of a good web host

You may not realise, or even think about the value of having a good, reliable company hosting your web site when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation.

However, consider this.

If your web site is frequently down due to hardware or connection problems, and the search engines try to crawl your site whilst it is down, think about what damage that is doing to your rankings. Why would the search engines want to point searchers to a web site that is more often down than not?

When choosing a web hosting company consider the following:

* Your Budget
* Their reputation
* The quality of their hardware
* Their SLA (Service Level Agreement)
* The quality and speed of their connection to the Internet
* The volume of bandwidth they allow per month

Choosing a good quality host is important in terms of SEO, but also in terms of the quality of the experience that your site visitors have when on your site.

When it comes to web hosting we personally wouldn’t touch anyone other than Rackspace. You pay a little bit more but the support and service is a million miles better than anyone else out there!