1. No control over all elements. Rankings will always fluctuate and are  never permanent because you or your SEO agency will never be in control of all elements affecting Search Engine rankings
2. Search Engine algorithms change. Search Engines are notorious for changing the algorithms used to display results. Changes to Search Engines can severely affect your site’s ranking almost overnight – positive and negative.
3. Competitors optimise too. Competing websites might target the same search terms (keywords) with their own SEO campaign. This will affect your ranking, how much will depend on your competitors success.
4. Results depend on data centre. Search Engines use different local data centres, which will show different rankings in different regions for the same search terms and same website.
5. Don’t log-in to check rankings. Your rankings will depend whether Search Engine users are logged in or not. For example when you log-in to your Google account all the search results will be customised to your history and will be different to when you log-out.
6. Some sites have more cloud than you. Popular social media sites or dominant news sites might publish articles with the same keyword focus as your site. Because these sites have a large number of indexed pages and are indexed hourly you might find your site loosing rankings as soon as a relevant article is published
7. Website age matters. New websites are more likely to fluctuate in ranking than mature websites because of the age of indexed content and the lack of clear keyword significance.
8. Website content matters. Uncontrolled uploading of content to your website can cause keyword dilution  and changes to the keyword significance Search Engines allocate to your site.  Even small changes to your content especially  page titles can adversely affect rankings over time.
9. Consistent link building. Poor link building strategy will cause your rankings to fluctuate substantially. Spam links, infrequent link building, high volume link building activity followed by no activity at all will all make your search results less stable.
10. Keep your site up and running. Frequent website downtime and pages that can’t be found will over time form a picture of unreliability in Search Engine’s indices. Access, loading and technical problems will result in adverse and fluctuating rankings. Make sure you chose a good hosting provider and check all your links on your website.

There are lot of other elements impacting your rankings such as age of your domain name and age of your content. For this reason alone never through away your existing content and never launch a new website without proper redirection of your old pages. If in doubt, consult your Search Engine Optimisation company.

Don’t give up just yet!. We have complied our top ten tips on how to select an online marketing agency and make the business relationship successful.

1. Do it yourself. Don’t delegate the selection process to a junior member of your team.  You have to be able to work with and trust your chosen agency. Make sure the chemistry and communication is good. You’ll be ideally working together for a long time (12-24months) so make sure you’re a good fit. Only you will know!!
2. Demand business acumen. Good online marketing is firstly about understanding your business. In fact it is all about understanding your business.  Don’t appoint some bedroom SEO guru or some remote online agency with a standard, off the shelf ’service plan’.  Online marketing is about ideas on how to promote your business and how to get those ideas delivered.
3. Look at search results. Look at websites that rank well for important (high volume) keywords – in your industry or comparable industries. Find out which agency does their search engine optimization and online marketing and invite them to pitch.
4. Understand the basics. Read SEO and online marketing articles (the Internet is littered with them) so you got a basic understanding or at least have some specific questions on subjects you don’t understand. Don’t believe everything you read but use a little knowledge to structure you conversation in an agencies’ pitch.
5. Get recommendations. Surely you know some other business people or website owners. Who are they using, what are their views and what are their recommendations?
6. Get client references. As for client references early on in the agency pitch.  Ideally phone numbers of current clients that you can call and talk to. Find out if  online marketing has improved the overall success of their business, not just improved search engine rankings. Pick the agency that you feel has the best record of success and is most likely to help you grow your business.
7. Get a quote. If you get a standard proposal and a price list for standard services then you’ve got the wrong company. If you get a price range, keep talking and find out the likely cost for your specific needs. If you get a customised quote but it is outside  your budget, consider it anyway.  The higher cost might get you additional or accelerated benefits.
8. Understand services provided. Don’t haggle over price but let the agency explain the specific services provided. By knowing the services you are getting you can potentially reduce agency fees by trimming ‘non-essential’ services. You can always add those services back in at a later stage, if necessary for the success of your online marketing campaign.
9. Define delivery period. Understand time required to deliver on your requirements.  Many agencies ask for twelve-month contract.  Online marketing and in particular SEO takes time o implement and to see the results can take many months. Don’t try to cram everything into a few months, as up front cost will be extremely high. Longer contracts give both you and the SEO more security and reduce the pressure of having unwarranted expectations that cannot be met. You can also ask for the same amount of work be performed over a longer period of time. This will create a slower path to improved performance, but will fit your budget better without cutting essential services.
10. Got limited budgets? If your budget is too small to buy you a online marketing campaign with a reputable agency, find one that offers consulting on a hourly or day rate basis.  Good advice from an expert agency is well worth a few hundred pounds per day and you won’t have any long-term commitments.

Here is our guide on Social Media and the key steps in the Social Media process:

1. Content, content, content. If you are not able to generate good quality, unique and useful content on a regular basis you might as well stay clear of the Social Media route. Good content, if promoted correctly, gets you an audience. Ongoing good content gets you a following.
2. Become the expert. Not only do you need to publish good content you also need to become an expert in your field publishing on blogs,  writing articles and white papers,  answering questions on niche forums.
3. Keyword focus. Make sure each post, document, video or status update you publish includes keyword rich anchor text to relevant pages on your website.
4. Automate content distribution. There are many ways you can automate communication with your target audience.  RSS feeds and ping allow users to subscribe to your content.
5. Publish, publish, publish. Publish your content where ever and when ever you can. Avoid duplicate content and article spamming. Use blogs, forums, social networks, potcasts, youtube, flickr and other websites to publish quality content and comments.
6. Capture emails. Where ever you can make sure you capture email addresses. that way you can support you Social Media activities with targeted email campaigns.
7. Drive Traffic to your main site. Anything you publish should link back to you main business website,  ideally to a page with relevant content. the web page should also have contact information and email sign-up forms.
8. Maintain Conversation. Keep in touch with you audience through social networks, forums, twitter, blog comments etc. Maintain the same identity so you audience can identify you as a trusted source.
9. Maintain steady effort. Keep up your Social Media effort at the same or increasing pace. Don’t stop and start.  Try to do something every day.
10. Budget for Social Media. Although most social media sites are free to use, your time is not.  Larger companies have teams to deliver there Social Media strategies. Other companies outsource to agencies at substantial costs. Social Media requires considerable effort and time. It is not free. Don’t fall for it.

Here is what we include in  SEO audits and what we think you should look at when you define SEO projects for your business:

1. Business Objectives - SEO needs to be aligned with your business objectives. You need to what you want to achieve and how to measure this. Especially if you are thinking of outsourcing SEO or recruiting staff to deliver SEO
2. Understand your Competitors – SEO success often depends what other companies do. Find out who your competitors are, both direct and online and what is their visibility online.
3. Keyword Research and Analysis - Identify all business relevant key phrases. Think out of the box. What would search engine users type in to Google to find your business? Read more on keyword research.
4. Check indexation - If you got an existing site, make sure the website is indexed in search engines. Make sure there are no access limitations for robots, no site or server performance issues , no dead links or  site loading issues.
5. Ranking Report – You have to understand you current rankings for all major search engines. Which URLs are shown for which search term and at which position. Do don’t want to undo good rankings. Equally you want to focus on rankings that can be improved.
6. On-page Optimisation – Is your current site keyword optimised? If you are launching a new website for your business make sure you define the optimal site structure before you build the website.
7. Internal Link Structure – Are you web pages linked in a ’search engine’ optimised way. Have you used relevant keywords as link text between pages. For new websites, we highly recommend that you have a well defined link structure before you build your site.
8. Inbound Link Analysis – External links to your site are critical for SEO success. If you got existing links, are these links SEO optimised? Do they come from good neighbourhoods ? What links have your competitors got?
9. Resourcing – SEO requires upfront and ongoing resources. Do you have internal resources that can be trained or do you need to get an agency involved in delivering all or part of your SEO project.
10. SEO Budget – SEO costs money. Even very small SEO projects can cost £10k or more to achieve good rankings for a small number of keywords. You have to define your budget before you start SEO. Running out of money half way through any SEO campaign will do your ranking more harm than good. If you only got a small budget, set smaller targets.

If you want to find out more on SEO audits and our services please contact us or sign-up to our newsletter.

Here some factors to consider:

1. Is your business idea / business model truly unique. If not can you improve on the existing business models?
2. What are your USP (unique selling points)?
3. Are you entering market which is mature or growing. Either way the challenge for your business will be a different one?
4. Where will you get your business leads from and at what cost?
5. Have you had an independent view on your business model, other than approval from fiends and family?
6. Have you checked out size and sophistication of your competitors?
7. How long can you run your business on zero income?
8. Will your business model still be required in two years time?
9. Is your business satisfying a consumer or business need or are you just realising your own dream?
10. What ongoing time commitment and capital will you require to run the business the next two years.

We hope the above list will get you thinking and planning before you even spend a penny on business collateral. Remember logo / website designs come fairly cheap these days but they are still a waste of money if you have not got a business model.

Before you start spending money on realising your web idea, there some things you should consider. Here our ‘reality check’ or feasibility check list:

1. Do you need income from your project or is it just a little fun?
2. Is there existing demand for you idea? If not, why not?
3. How many sites / businesses are doing this already?
4. Is your idea commercially viable – will there be potential users?
5. What revenue models are available to fund your idea?
6. What search volume is available to drive traffic to your site?
7. Will it be feasible and cost effective to optimise your site?
8. Are there existing competitors, that could deliver your idea?
9. Are there any open source apps you could use to realise your idea?
10. Could you partner with another company to realise your idea?

You see, it only takes a little web thinking to qualify and quantify an idea before you start spending money on it.

You got an idea for a website or web application and everybody is telling you you need a big budget to realise your idea?

We don’t think so! Talk to us