SEO Course January 2012 Week 4

Posted by EssexMax on 6 February 2012 under Course Notes | 4 Comments to Read

The fourth and final week of our Search Engine Optimisation Course was on Monday the 30th of January 2012, and as ever, was a lively session. After covering the on-page optimisation in week 3, for the final week, we looked at things that need to be done site-wide, and off site. Here’s a summary

 

Links to your site

Getting links into your site are key to getting it noticed. You can check how many links you currently have, and how valuable they are, by creating a free Majestic SEO account

Screenshot of Majestic SEO

Screenshot of Majestic SEO in action

If you’re looking for some suggested things to try to get a few quality incoming links, here are some ideas:

  • Ask for a link from your suppliers, customers, etc
  • Make good use of social networking – Facebook, Twitter or YouTube
  • Get yourself listed in a couple of directories
  • Have a look at your competition’s links for inspiration
  • Find out where your audience hang out, and join them online
  • Make contact with people in your field, and ask them for a link
  • Don’t buy links, and remember that you’re after links from relevant sites – it’s quality, not quantity

Sitemaps

A sitemap is a very important tool – it helps the search engines to find each page on your site, especially the pages that the likes of Google may not be able to find.

Here are a few links on the subject:

We’ve added some more information on Sitemaps. See Using Sitemaps on your site

 

SEOMoz

We also took a very quick look at SEO Moz – This is a great tool for tracking your SEO progress, but it’s not cheap, and unless you do SEO for a living, this might not be a good investment for you – however, if you have the budget, this is a top tool for managing all things SEO, with lots of nice automated reports.

A screenshot of a SEOMoz Campaign

A screenshot of a SEOMoz Campaign

Next Steps

Thanks to everyone who attended the course – there was a lot to squeeze in, and hopefully everyone found a few things to take away and start working on.

If you’re bitten by the bug, the Maximising Your Website course should be running on the 20th of February. Take a look at the course summary, and if you’re interested, let me know.

Related Links

Tags: , , ,

  • mark said,

    Hi Pete

    I enjoyed the previous four weeks and better understand some of the principles of SEO even if i am not comfortable enough yet to play with my commercial sites. Also thanks for the email today, i am looking forward to learning how to make money from a website, but that is not why i am sending this message.

    On the last day of the course you reiterated the major points of a sitemap for websites. However on this site you have an html sitemap. Do you also have an xml sitemap in the background for google etc or did you submit the html version and if so why?

    Regards

    Mark

    P.s. I hope i get a free link lol.

  • EssexMax said,

    Hi Mark,

    Thanks for the message. Glad you found the course useful.

    The short answer is that we have both, a visible HTML sitemap for our human visitors, and an XML Sitemap in the background, for the robots.

    For the longer answer, see the page I’ve just put togther at http://www.essexmax.co.uk/using-sitemaps-on-your-website.html

  • mark said,

    Hi Pete

    Hope you had a nice time at the gadget show.

    I have recieved an email today promoting http://www.webceo.com seo software, which has a free to use version. The question is have you used this and does it have any benefits.

    Hope the new course runs okay.

    Regards

    Mark

  • EssexMax said,

    Looks good at first glance, but must admit, I’ve not tried this service. $49 a month, or a one-off $499… so if it’s really free, as a 14-day trial, it could be a good deal. Just check the terms of any deal

Add A Comment

home top