Targeting the wrong keywords

This is a mistake many people make and what is worse – even experienced SEO experts make it. Choosing the wrong keywords to target is the most common mistake made , usually down to not researching your target market effectively , try to choose keywords or phrases that people will actually use to look for your products/ services, ask your friends , colleagues and even google what people are searching for ;o) ( google keyword tool is a nice little tool to help you do this)

Ignoring the Title tag

Leaving the title tag empty is also very common. This is one of the most important places to put a keyword or 2 , it is the piece of information that also appears under your search return result in search engines.

Flash websites without an html alternative

Flash might be “flash” and attractive , but search engines cannot read any of it , if you want a flash website and want to rank well then you will have to put in the necessary work to produce an html alternative , or better still opt for no flash and use the myriad of jscript and html5 tools to produce the desired “flashiness”

JavaScript Menus

Again search engines cannot read javascript, so bear that in mind when building your site and produce alternative navigation that is readable, also ensure you have a sitemap to aid googles crawling.

Lack of consistency and maintenance

Many people make the mistake of performing a “first fix” of SEO work and never go back to correct or update , to make the most of your SEO it is an ongoing process which should involve keeping an eye on search trends and of course what your competition is doing … keep updating and adding to it to get the best results.

Concentrating too much on meta tags

A lot of people seem to think SEO is about getting your meta keywords and description correct! Whilst metatags and meta descriptions are important they are not the be all and end all of any SEO work you are intending to do on your website. Your SEO practices should look at your site as a whole, there are many more ways to build your rankings than just meta information.

Using only Images for Headings

Many people think that an image looks better than text for headings and menus. Yes, an image can make your site look more distinctive but in terms of SEO images for headings and menus are a big mistake because h2, h2, etc. tags and menu links are important SEO items. If you are afraid that your h1 h2, etc. tags look horrible, try modifying them in a stylesheet.

Ignoring URLs

Many people underestimate how important a good URL is. Dynamic page names are still very frequent and no keywords in the URL is more a rule than an exception. Yes, it is possible to rank high even without keywords in the URL but all being equal, if you have keywords in the URL Keywords in URLs are more important for MSN and Yahoo! but even with Google their relative weight is high, so there is no excuse for having keywordless URLs.

Backlink spamming

Quality NOT quantity is the rule here ,many people assume that the more the merrier .. this is NOT the case , gone are the days where you could enhance your rankings by placing or gaining links from every forum , directory , or random site you can find , make your links count by making them relevant and worthwhile , you would effectively be better off having none than thousands of lame ducks ;o)

Lack of keywords in the content

Once you focus on your keywords, modify your content and put the keywords wherever it makes sense. Make sure that the text makes sense and is readable , search engines are not stupid , they are intelligent enough to ignore spammy content with keywrods thrown all over the place , brush up on your writing skills ;o) .

As a bit of an experimental foray into the way of the SEO world and as a marketing exercise we decided to build a blog aimed at readers interested in spoiling themselves and those they love. With a mixture of topics and more than one author the aim of the exercise is to give the blog varied but relevant content just as a bit of a test to see what results we could achieve. Its an ongoing project that over time we hope will grow.

We are currently testing out plug-ins for it and would welcome more contributors and article writers.

Pampering for You

Does blogging boggle you  ?

Would you like someone to take over writing your SEO focussed blog posts ?

Rainbow Studios are pleased to announce this is now a service that we provide, from as little as £10 per week Rainbow studios will take over writing your blog posts based on the terms you are wanting to be ranking for …

If you would like more details on this service feel free to contact us via the contact form on this site or drop us a mail .

Free WordPress Metalic theme.

Here we have two free WordPress themes for you to download and use,
created by us at Rainbow Designs.

These themes have a fully widgetised footer, three colomns, all widget enabled.

free wordpress theme

click the image above to view the themes in our test area

To use one of these themes simply download the zip file of the theme you want, extract the contents and upload the
rainbow-m or rainbow-mb folder (depending on which theme you have downloaded) and its contents to /wp-content/themes/ and activate the theme in
admin > Appearance > Themes
or upload the zip file via your wordpress admin panel,
admin > Appearance > Add New Themes

Click here to download the Metalic theme as a .zip file

Click here to download the Metalic Blue theme as a .zip file

after trying to explain this without images this morning i thought maybe it was time to write a how to

you can do this from both your personal and business pages or groups on facebook.

THis is a screen shot of the normal status update bar you will all be familiar with.

Click on the image icon to give you the option to upload a photo from your computer

select the appropriate image from your pc

once the image location is in the box, you can write the status in to go with it

typing an @ infront of  a name will give you a drop down list of friends and pages for you to choose who to tag in the status and will give you a clickable link to that persons profile or fan page like this

select from the list whoever you wish to tag, you can tag up to 5 different people or pages.

Once you have completed the above steps click share and facebook will upload the picture and update your status, use the text carefully and you have built yourself a very SEO aware update complete with clickable links, from experience google likes these )

I hope that helps some of you out there to generate better and more relevant links to promote your businesses.

Increasingly more companies use Twitter for business – to do market research, do brand advocacy and reputation management and provide selected highlights from a conference or event. Twitter allows them to expand their brand and thus generate new opportunities.

In this article, Mahendra shows you how you can integrate Twitter into your Powerpoint presentation and receive instant feedback. Steven has written about using hashtags effectively. And also, you can learn more about Twitter Lists to follow people more closely.

Read Full Article

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” search results.
These natural search results are the hard work alternative to any adwords or pay per click campaigns.

The target for many website owners is to appear at the top of a search engine such as google for their chosen keywords and search terms, the holy grail in many website owners minds is to appear within searches on a purely organic basis , preferably in the number one spot!!!
This however is not guaranteed as the search engines and slurps change the alogrithms constantly pertaining to a websites worthiness of appearing. Over doing the techniques by using keyword stuffing or spamming and using ‘Black Hat’ SEO techniques (such as blocks of hidden text within a web page and link farms) will cause your rankings to drop and may even cause your site to be backlisted by the great google.

Typically, the higher a site’s “page rank” (i.e, the earlier it comes in the search results list), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

Search engine optimisation may be offered as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

For those with a Bricks and Mortar Business,  geographically identifying your business is a must in order for people to find you amongst the pages and pages of results linked to your search terms.

Adding yourself to google  geographically is a relatively simple task and all the help you need is right under your nose at the  New! Google Local Business Centre .
Now offering a reporting dashboard. Learn how people find your business.

1. Claim your local listings on the search engines and enhance your local profile! The goal is to be very visible and found easily on Search Engines through PPC, organic results, and Maps.
2. Enhance your local profile and make sure your listings are complete — use images,  videos,  testimonials,  and rich descriptions.
3. Take advantage of Social Media — Facebook,  Twitter,  LinkedIn,  and blogs to enhance internet marketing campaigns and utilize them effectively to keep in touch with customers.
4. Create a separate company profile and fan page for your business — Fan pages add juice and elevate your search rankings.
5. Social Media is about having conversations with your customers, with real-time communication — specials, tips, and products. Customers who enjoy what you are talking about will re-tweet and give links. This is how you can dramatically expand your reach.
6. Brand Factor — How far does your brand go?  Social media broadcasts and expands your reach for little cost and increases your search factor.
7. Video Impact on Organic Search — Videos have a huge impact on the number of visitors to your website and conversion rates. Videos on your website or landing pages create excitement and help people understand your business.
8. Use analytics to find out what is driving traffic, and then do more of what is driving that traffic.
9. Focus on conversion rates. See what your website is saying about your business and if it is exciting for your customers.
10. Network with Local Businesses — Get links from your ecosystem and network,  and create a community.

Focussing on Key Phrases

Keyphrases rather than keywords ?



Everyone goes on about keywords … I think practically any SEO guide ive read will bang on about keywords before they even mention phrases, but very few people type one word into a search engine.

If you want to buy knickers and you live in a town called twaddlesville, you don’t just type in knickers ……. Do you ?

You tend to write a phrase something like: knickers for sale twaddlesville, this search would narrow down your results making it much more realistic. If you use the search phrase: knickers “for sale” twaddlesville, you’re narrowing the results even futher. Not everyone knows how to do exact searches but you can see how a key phase is much more workable than a keyword.



Many people make the mistake of trying to make their homepage the be all and end all when it comes to SEO, there really is only so much you can do to optimise one page in terms of catching traffic, trying to optimise one page with four different search terms or keywords amounts to what i would term a pretty impossible task. Better to optimise the deeper pages with a mind to what you want the whole site to achieve, this is why we advise our clients to consider their target market and their chosen phrases and words before even embarking on the onpage SEO of their new site. Every page, category, title, meta tag has a relevance when it comes to helping your site perform at its best in the search engine results.



Despite opinions to the contrary i fail to see in the experiments ive seen and conducted myself that meta tags are ‘defunkt’ these days and am more of the mind that anything that can possibly help should be done and done in a well planned and controlled manner. Any text entered on your site has the ability to be turned into what i term as google food, Google is clever tho, it will recognise sentences that are badly constructed and out of context or irrelevant. It will take into account the text around any link you make as well as the text of the link itself, it does indeed read the same way more or less that a human does, so therefore it HAS to make sense as readable content in order for the search engines to give it any credibility.

To sum up: building an e-commerce store doesn’t guarantee it will be seen by the search engines and bring in business.
Even if search engines have been to your website; if it isn’t properly optimised they may not index all of the pages and information you have. If search engines do not index your entire site then the only visitors you will have are people you send the website address to.