Happy Birthday to The Athena Network North Oxford

I really enjoy my monthly meetings with all of the ladies from Athena Network North Oxford. It's a great opportunity to make new business contacts in both a friendly and professional environment. Yesterday's meeting was no exception as it was the Group's 2nd Birthday, celebrated in 'pink' style.

This group of keen networkers meets at The Oxford Centre in Summertown and attracts businesswomen from a wide range of professions from Accountant to Change Agent to Pilates Coach and just about everything in between.

Being part of the Group enables me to evangelise about web marketing and SEO, as well as get to know a wide range of women professionals from a diverse range of backgrounds and businesses. In September I'll be looking forward to running a workshop for the group, looking at the question of 'So you want to appear on the first page of Google'...

New videos for the Oxford Web SEO YouTube Channel

We recently updated our YouTube Channel and uploaded some new presentation videos from one of our seminars entitled - 'So you want to learn how to improve your website Google rankings?'

We've pulled out some snippets from the seminar, looking at the main areas we should all focus on when looking to make our websites visible in search engines such as Google and Bing. For example, this edited highlight explains what organic search engine optimisation is all about, and how SEO is a device for making your website visible in search engines.



Video is a great content addition to your website. It encourages engagement and provides interactivity on your website. Content optimisation is no longer just about the written word and including not only YouTube vids, but podcasts, quick polls, quizzes or RSS feeds all help to enhance your website visitor experience and hopefully that of the search engines that come to visit your website.

If you're interested in finding out more about how to improve the visibililty of your website in search engines, then please contact Tracy Walker to discuss your content strategy.

Oxford Web SEO Seminar Thursday 27th January

Oxford Web SEO held a special invite only event last week to launch the start of Oxford Web SEO and deliver a seminar that focused on the question of 'So you want to learn how to improve your website Google rankings?'

Our seminar delivered a range of core hints and tips to get organisations thinking about the way they approach their website. Search engine optimisation is all about increasing the visibility of your website in search engines, in order to make it easy for people to find your offerings and services.

Our approach is getting you to think more carefully about how people will find you. What words are they likely to use in a search engine like Google or Bing to associate with your organisation? They may not be the 'everyday' words that you use within your organisation - perhaps jargon terms that won't be understood on the outside.

So think more carefully about the words and phrases that will help get you found in search engine results listings.

Take a look at some of the photo's on our Oxford Web SEO Facebook Page.

If you would like to find out more about our services and how we can help make your website more visible in an increasingly competitive market, then please visit our Oxford Web SEO website for more information on search engine optimisation, or email us at tracy@oxfordwebseo.co.uk or call us on 01865 920121.

Making your website attractive - why is it important to build links?

It's a crucial part of organic search engine optimisation to build strong referral links to your website. The more referral website links you have to your website, means the greater your chance of higher search engine rankings. In fact search engines see links as ‘votes’ for your website.

Search engines are generally of the opinion that if lots of visitors find your content interesting enough to link to it, then your website must have something useful to offer. Search engines are always on the lookout for 'interesting' sites to display in their top ranking results. Hence the more links you have, the more likely search engines will give you a higher ranking.

However, don't be fooled into thinking that requesting links from just anybody will make your website more popular. When we talk about link building, we're talking about attracting and getting good, quality links from industry partners that you are happy to be associated with and that will add some gravitas and weight to your own website.

You should aim to get quality referrals from:

• People in the same sector, experts or suppliers
• Charity sites, educational organisations, people you support / sponsor
• Industry bodies and associations
• News sites
• Blogs and forums
• Social media and bookmarking sites

If possible suggest the link to your website to your referrer – search engines weight the actual ‘anchor text’ that forms the text link to your website.

Try and include at least one of your core keywords as the link. For example, “My favourite search engine optimisation partner” - where the text links to the URL of the website. However, links from different websites should be varied to aid natural searching.

Link to your own website pages frequently from your own Blog or Social Networking sites, using your website keywords.

Above all you need to encourage people to want to share content from your site. Your website is nothing without it's content and unless you keep your website up-to-date; write good, clear textual content; and provide interesting gimmicks, such as videos, no one will be attracted to your website.

What purpose does your website currently serve?

SEO is all about making your website visibility strong in the major search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. However, the key point to remember is that in order for search engine optimisation to work and benefit your website, it has to have a direction and a strategy.

So, what role does your website currently play in your organisation's marketing strategy? Is its aim to sell your products and services online; or is it there for brand and corporate awareness? Attracting more visitors to your website is all about knowing your intended market and you can only optimise your website once you know what is.

Try out some initial benchmarking to see where your website currently sits in search engine rankings. You need to measure and monitor your website visibility in order to continue to improve it.

Similarly, you can't target your website at people, if you don't know what they may be looking or searching for. You need to research the keywords and phrases that your your potential customers and clients will use to find your organisations services.

You also need to stay ahead of your competition and find out what they're up to. Check their search engine ranking listings in Google and Bing - take a look around their websites.

You don't have to do all of this alone. If you'd like our advice on how to optimise your current website, or want to learn more for yourself, then visit us at Oxford Web SEO to take a look at our SEO services and training courses.

What's so good about organic SEO?

When it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO), many people are confused and baffled by what SEO is and what it actually means for their organisations' website.

Search engine optimisation is the process of improving the volume of traffic to a website from search engines, typically via ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ search results.

Many see it as some kind of alchemism - the casting of a magical spell to get your website to the number one spot on Google. But be very wary of anyone who claims that they can get your website to the number one spot on Google. Unless obviously they are wearing a wizards' hat or brandishing a magic wand!

Unfortunately, there is no magic involved, only lots of hard work to try and get your website visible to your potential clients, members and customers. Effective SEO is about organising and presenting your website to search engines to ensure relevancy, creditably and accessibility.

Organic search engine optimisation techniques employ the use of natural ranking methods of search engines to generate traffic to a website. It means that you don’t have to use paid advertising to draw traffic to your site. Our strategy at Oxford Web SEO is based on using keywords and phrases that match your organisation and ultilising those throughout your website.

You may think paid-for-advertising is a quick win, but it requires constant investment and a large budget – especially in a competitive market. Organic SEO is a one time initial investment, but is ongoing and requires hard work to maintain. Also consider that since Google began auctioning popular keywords to the highest bidder, paid for advertising is no longer viable for small to medium sized businesses.

Organic SEO is good because:

• Typically organic SEO encourages more traffic to your website than paid for advertising.
• Organic SEO techniques hone in on relevant content for a website and not flash advertising gimmicks.
• Search engine users are often wary of adverts and typically they follow links to websites within the actual search results. If your site is displayed in amongst the top search engine results, then people are more likely to trust you.

The organic SEO services we provide at Oxford Web SEO is combined with our overall strategy for your website. The techniques and standards that we adopt are applied to every aspect of our SEO services.

If you would like us to take a look at your website and provide you with a review of how we can improve your search engine rankings, then please get in contact with Tracy Walker on 01865 920121, or at info@oxfordwebseo.co.uk.