Google Webmaster tools have for a long time had the option to create custom 404 pages. If you are unsure on what 404 pages are then you should have a quick read of them here. I have always been a fan of the custom 404 page which basically allows the 404 page to display the template of your website with only the content area changing. Within the content area you would place the message “Page not found” or something similar, but crucially it allows you to add a search feature where a user can navigate through the website to find something relevant to their initial search.

I’m a bit of a hypocrite with this as I don’t always do it, as you can see on this blog! However that is mainly due to the fact that I used a WordPress template and everything is kinda done for you – no search feature this time though. Something else you can add is an internal HTML sitemap for inner pages so the user can choose from any of these, just as easily as searching for something they want.

The beauty of the custom 404 page is in the name. It really is custom and you can tailor it to suit your users. Find out your most popular pages or posts and offer links to these, and of course, add the search box. Webmaster forums has a page which shows you how to do this for your site here.

In terms of SEO, there is no harm in not having custom 404 pages, as long as you locate your 404 pages and redirect them before they get found by Google (and other search engines). It is more a case of usability and user experience. It offers alternatives and you are more likely to keep users on your site by using this method.

On Tuesday the 10th August I will be presenting to my colleagues my method of manual link building. The main areas of coverage will be:

• Competitor Analysis
• Keyword Research
• Data Analysis
• Contacting Relevant Sources
• Liaising On Prices and SLAs
• Research competitors links
• Find where your site’s weaknesses are
• Choose your keywords and work out how many links you need for each
• Use SEO Moz Linkscape
• Open Site Explorer
• Filter relevant data
• Look into “authority” of domains
• Categorise Links into paid, directories, articles, blog comments, forum comments etc
• Contact webmasters and liaise

I will post the summary of the discussion after the presentation to explain other methods and ways to develop my own method.

Today a colleague and I looked into link popularity and how to increase it for your website. You can find the full SEO Blog here but a summary is below:

As we all know building links is still a big deal in the SEO industry. Websites such as Twitter and Facebook can improve your online presence and it can be more interesting using social media channels to build links. The problem is that it can take a lot of time and may not suit everyone.

Another way of getting people to link to you is to have quality content on your website. A quick breakdown of doing this is below:

• Make Top 10 Lists (can be different, but you get the idea)
• Videos
• Images
• Interviews
• Free Downloads
• Studies/Reports
• Tutorials

Some important things to consider for this strategy are;

• Is your market more likely to link to content that’s humorous or informative – find the most relevant subject for your audience.
• Is your site SEO friendly and also user friendly? Will people be able to link back to your URLs easily or are your URLs really long with query strings?
• If you provide good quality content for the audience and visitors to your site, backlinks will naturally follow, so don’t obsess over how to get the most links from every post or article.

Recently, two of my colleagues and I set about looking into the ways in which social media and SEO can exist together, the benefits of each and which is more important to your website.

The blog discussed whether search engine optimisation and social media optimisation work well together, by delving into both areas on a general level and explaining how to use them to your advantage, concluding with our final opinions on the matter.

We concluded that SEO techniques are employed to help sites rank highly in the search engine results pages of Google, Bing and Yahoo while SMO is used to raise brand awareness, create a buzz and get consumers talking about you. The main aim of both these techniques is to effectively make you and/or the site better known and more popular, which will result in more traffic and sales or whatever you aim your goal to be.

In our opinion, SMO and SEO can exist perfectly together. They both have positives and negatives but together they can provide a tool that if used correctly, can make your online presence develop hugely.

While SMO will continue to grow over the years and SEO continues to shift and change, the main focus will be on your users/customers and to build relationships and trust with them.

To read the rest of the post in more detail go here – SEO Blog

Manual link building is a very good but very tedious method of finding links to your website. The advantage over buying links in bulk is that you know exactly what you are getting, where the links are from and you can ensure the links are relevant to your industry or website subject matter.

In my job link building is a major part of my day to day life, it’s something that takes up maybe an hour of my day, whether for clients’ websites or the company’s site itself. Our SEO Blog is often linked to naturally, via Twitter retweets or people linking to us through choice. It is a great way of getting exposure.

Manual link building includes directory submissions, blog comments, article submissions, paid links and forum posts. There are other ways too – press releases and social media implementation such as Twitter and Facebook, keeping a regularly updated blog can benefit your website no end. If you keep your blogs interesting, give them the right exposure on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and relevant article sites you will achieve brand exposure as well as increased traffic.

In my opinion there is no substitute for manual link building. Yes, it can be tedious, but if you get it right you are well on your way to having a succesful online presence.