Interview with May 2012 Website of the Month winner SEOwned | Heart Internet Blog – Focusing on all aspects of the web

We talked to Website of the Month winner Dan Taylor, owner of SEOwned.co.uk, to find out more about the importance of search in the UK, the relationship between search engine optimisation and social media, and much more.

Hi Dan, tell us a bit about yourself and your background.

My background is quite varied and I took quite a while to get into Internet Marketing but always had an interest in computing. My first online job was as a freelance designer/front-end developer but I found it quite difficult in getting work. I applied for a job that sounded similar, as an SEO and the rest is history. I have held almost every position in SEO from junior SEO, senior SEO and finally through to SEO Manager at MoneySupermarket.

I left MoneySupermarket this year to focus solely on my new venture SEOwned.

What kind of look and feel did you want for SEOwned.co.uk, and why?

SEOwned as a business has been going for around 18 months and has already had about 3 different designs for the website. I couldn’t put my finger on why but the old designs just didn’t put across the professional and modern look I wanted for SEOwned. I wanted big bold imagery at the top of the page, with clean bold colours.

You offer web design/development alongside your SEO services. What’s been the most rewarding project you’ve worked on and why?

I am currently working with a local driving school. We designed, built and hosted their website and applied some basic SEO. The owner reported the following week that calls were up. Helping local businesses grow is what we are all about. However we have also just started working with North West Blood Bikes on a pro bono basis to provide them with a new website, and Internet marketing advice so that will hopefully work out well too.

SEO is an incredibly competitive field. How did you go about marketing and promoting your business, and what methods do you rely on to attract new customers?

SEO is a very competitive market so what we have done is focus on one key area – local SEO. We are looking to help small businesses thrive in their niche markets. Using the example of driving schools from above. In almost every area there is massive demand for this service but not many national providers so all of the listings will be local businesses. We aim to rank our sites at the top of the organic listings as well as any supplemental listings such as Google Places/Maps.

In terms of attracting customers to our own site we reply on word of mouth as well as having referral schemes set up with some bigger agencies. At times we do also turn on Google Adwords or Facebook Advertising.

People are increasingly losing faith in SEO with Google’s major Penguin and Panda updates. Has it affected your outlook or ranking strategies at all?

Google has always and will always continue to update its algorithms, however by using common sense it becomes a lot easier to steer clear of any issues. I wrote a blog post 2 years ago about optimising for users not search engines and the same still stands true. If your website is useful, unique and well written then rankings in Google should follow. There are obviously other factors to take into consideration now such as social signals etc. but the same concept applies. People are more likely to link to/share/comment on great, useful, and unique content.

There are lots of different views out there on the relationship between SEO and social media. Do you believe social media has a direct impact on rankings?

If you think from a search engines point of view then social signals have to become the new links. Why? Because they are harder to manipulate. A single high quality, relevant link can help you rank but the same is not true of a social share, where a much larger number of shares should be observed on high quality content. People are more likely to click share than write a blog post with a link to your page with the anchor text you want.

What are the advantages of having a business based online?

I think the correct question here is what are the disadvantages of not having your business online. In the UK around 58% of all purchase decisions start with a search. If your business does not appear in these results you are missing out on almost 60% of your potential customers. You don’t need to be Duncan Bannatyne to understand that business mistake.

I am not sure many small business owners understand how easy and low cost it can be to get online. At SEOwned we offer an online for £500 offer, which covers design, build, domain name and hosting (with Heart) for a year. That’s £500 to reach an extra 58% of potential customers.

Why did you choose to host your website with Heart Internet?

I have been with Heart for around 6 years or so now. I think my initial decision was made based on cost. No other reseller at the time offered unlimited bandwidth and customers for such a cheap price. In fact, the same still stands true I think? I cannot think of a more competitively priced reseller with the same feature set.

However what keeps me at Heart in the support. Although it’s all online based with no telephone support I must say I have never had to wait longer that 2/3 minutes for someone to be assisting me.

How did you go about asking people to vote for you in the Website of the Month competition?

I set scheduled updates on Twitter through both my business and personal accounts as well as leveraging Facebook groups and pages that I am a member of.

What online resources would you suggest to people looking to learn more about SEO?

Fro beginners I would suggest the guide at SEOMoz as well as the SEOwned Blog of course. Sites such as SEO Chicks, State of Search and Holistic Search also provide timely updates and advice.

For those that want to meet the experts then conferences such as Think Visibility, SAScon and Brighton SEO are also highly recommended.

Thanks Dan!

 

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