Frequently Asked Questions

The FAQs are divided into six main categories. You can jump to the category of interest by clicking the links just below this paragraph. Place your mouse over the individual questions to view answers to commonly asked queries about the nature of our services, the recommendations we provide and HTML code. You can use your browser find (ctrl + F) function to find topics within this page.

General Questions | SEO Questions | PPC Questions | Link building | Landing pages

General Questions:

Do I need SEO or PPC?If you need traffic to your site as soon as possible, PPC is the best way forward. Google AdWoords delivers instantaneous traffic, which you can track and adjust to increase sales. However, you get charged per visitor click, which can work out to be quite expensive in the long run.

Search engine optimisation takes anywhere from 3-12 months to take effect, due to ageing delays applied by Google. This makes SEO a long-term strategy, and it cannot be relied on to drive instant traffic. However, in the long run, SEO is always more cost effective as you do not pay for clicks received from organic listings. SEO is therefore suitable if you can make ends meet initially and want to build a long-term ranking strategy.

Who is Search Starz?Search Starz is a fully owned subsidy of AccuraCast, one of the top search agencies in the UK (as ranked by New Media Age). The site was formed to specifically serve small UK businesses that are looking to establish a presence on Google. The team of AccuraCast employees working on SearchStarz have all worked on search marketing projects for a number of SMEs and blue chip companies.

You can find out more about our company, AccuraCast at www.accuracast.com

Why should I trust you with my money?The personnel working on your campaigns have years of SEM experience. We have worked with clients such as Informa, Hargreaves Lansdown, Comfort Inn, Waitrose, Tiscali and Advantage, and we never fail to deliver results. But you don't need to take our word for it...

Google themselves appreciate the work done by our company, AccuraCast, so much so that they wrote a case study about us and the excellent work we do!!

You can view this case study on Google's website at: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/success/accuracast.html

Have you worked with any famous brands?While SEO-London.info focuses on small and medium businesses that are not really household names, our company as a whole serves all parts of the market. Our client list includes the likes of Quality Inn, Tiscali, Stella Artois, Iberostar, Informa, Comfort Inn, and the list goes on!

Can I see examples of your work?Yes.

1. Search for any term related to air conditioner rentals, and you will see our client, Andrews Sykes ranking on the first page of the organic search results.
2. Search for Executive Recruitment services during office hours, and you will see our client, Brooklands Executives in the sponsored results (The campaign gets turned off every evening to reduce click wastage.)
3. You can go through our clients and testimonials page to see other examples of companies we work with and visit their sites and search results to view other examples of our work.

What if I am unhappy with the service?While we do not guarantee placement on Google, we do provide a service level guarantee, which means that if you are unhappy with our service, and feel you did not get what you paid for, you can email us via the Support form on the site and request a refund, clearly stating the reasons why you want to be refunded.

A refund will be provided if the shortcoming in service is our fault. This does not mean that you will get a refund if your website does not rank on Google or if you could not implement all our recommendations or if your visitors did not turn into sales and so on.

SEO Questions:

What is SEO?SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of improving a website's visibility on Google's organic search results, so that the site is ranked higher when users search for keywords relevant to the site.

What does the SEO service give me?Our SEO service provides five main deliverables:

1. Keyword strategy - that identifies the main keywords you should be targeting and the pages on your site that will be optimised for these keywords.
2. SEO recommendations - a detailed set of specific recommendations for your site, which you or your website designers should implement.
3. Robots.txt - text file that you can upload to your server.
4. XML sitemap setup - an XML document will be provided, which you can upload to your server and a Google Webmaster Central account will be setup.
5. Inbound links - 25 inbound links to your site from other websites. These links will have your keywords in their anchor text and will be sourced from trusted domains to provide you maximum SEO benefit.

How will the SEO recommendations be provided?While analysing your website, our consultants will make notes and prepare a detailed document that explains the issues identified and how you can resolve them. This document will be delivered to you, by email, in a MS Word or Adobe Acrobat format.

Who will implement the changes recommended?Depending on your site complexity and your level of familiarity with HTML, you can either implement the recommendations yourself, or ask anyone in your company, especially your webmaster to implement them. In very rare situations you might need to ask your website designers to implement certain changes.

Our role is purely consultative. We do not implement any changes on your website.

How long does the SEO review take?The review process itself takes 2 days. However, we recommend that you schedule to receive the recommendations one week from the date of ordering to accommodate for busy periods and high workloads. Rest assured that we will send you the SEO review report as soon as it's ready.

How much does it cost?The SEO review costs £500 including VAT.

You can also buy premium link building services for an additional £500 including VAT.

How many keywords can I target with my SEO?Since we are not spamming the search engines or creating artificial ranking mechanisms, we do not operate on a keyword limit basis. Therefore, there isn't any real keyword limit per se. The SEO Review aims to optimise your entire website. As a rule of thumb, we recommend optimising every product or service page for one or two main keyphrases. There is no need, though, to optimise a number of pages for combinations, synonyms and variations of the same keyphrase, as Google is smart enough to deduce relevance to the main keyphrase that the page is optimised for.

Will I need to do anything after the SEO review?The main outcome of the review is a recommendations document that will give you instructions on changes you need to make to your site in order to optimise it. Naturally, you (or your webmaster) will need to implement the recommendations in order to give your site every chance to rank high on Google.

Very often the recommendations will include an element of link building, which will also need to be carried out over the following months, to ensure that your site receives a good number of inbound links.

How long before I can see results on Google?Google imposes ageing delays on all new websites, web pages, links and even on changes to websites. The delays are longer for some sites than for others, depending on the history of changes made on the site.

Brand new sites should expect to wait at least 9-12 months before rankings can be acheived on any competitive terms. Older websites (2+ years) might see improvements in positioning as soon as a few weeks to 3 months after changes are made.

Do you guarantee results?No.

Google's organic results are algorithmically determined. No one other than Google can determine rankings, and Google's own ranking system gets updated frequently. A quick read through Google's webmaster help page about SEO will demonstrate that Google considers any agency that "guarantees" placement on search results to be untrustworthy.

Can Google ban my site for using SEO?Google recommends ethical SEO services as they will help users find websites that they are looking for. Hence, Google will never ban your site so long as you are using ethical SEO practices that aim to drive the right searches to your website. However, if you try to game the system and drive traffic on keywords that are not relevant to your website, you risk getting banned by Google.

We only provide ethical SEO services and will never recommend anything that could get your site banned.

What is robots.txt?Web site owners use the /robots.txt file to give instructions about their site to web robots; this is called The Robots Exclusion Protocol.

Details on this can be found at: www.robotstxt.org

What is XML?The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages. It is classified as an extensible language because it allows its users to define their own elements. Its primary purpose is to help information systems share structured data, particularly via the Internet. It is a fee-free open standard.

An XML sitemap is essentially a list of webpages on your site, specified using XML instead of regular HTML.

How are keywords researched?Google provides excellent keyword research tools via the AdWords advertising platform. We use this tool along with other third-party keyword research tools to build a keyword strategy.

Can you optimise a Flash website?Flash used to be considered extremely search engine unfriendly till recently. While Google can now index certain Flash elements, it is still not recommended to build sites fully in Flash. We can optimise Flash websites, but rather than working with just a Flash file, this typically involves creating a hybrid website with Flash elements interspersed in an HTML page.

How can I see what my website looks like to Google?In order to view how the search engine spider sees your website, go to Google and search for:

info:yourwebsite.com
(where "yourwebsite.com" is substituted by your actual website address, of course).

In the page that comes up, click on the link that says "Google's Cache". This is the version of your site the search engine spider last saw.

On the next page, a grey box appears on the top right, followed by the cached version of your page. Click on the link that says "Text-only version" in this grey box to see how the Google spider actually reads the contents of your site.

If your site has not yet been indexed the info: command will not bring up a result. If your site does not have any indexable content, the Text-only version will show a blank page below the grey box.

PPC Questions:

What is Google AdWords?Google AdWords is a platform that allows advertisers to place advertisiments on Google search results and on a number of popular websites that are a part of Google's Content Network.

Why can't I just set up the Google AdWords account myself?You can. Google AdWords provides a rather easy-to-use interface to help new advertisers set up new accounts and start paying for clicks. The trick, however, is to ensure that you don't pay premium bid amounts and run out of your budget in just a few clicks or bid on the wrong sort of keywords and end up paying for visitors who never turn into sales or leads.

Our set up service creates accounts in a manner that maximises your click through rate, conversion rate and overall AdWords Quality Score, as a result of which you end up paying much less than a novice advertiser or even the other competitors bidding on the same keywords. We also review your landing pages and build a keyword strategy to ensure that your traffic turns into sales.

So while you could set up a Google AdWords account yourself, you are better off letting professionals set up one that will actually drive leads and sales for you.

Does the £250 cover my advertising cost?No. The £250 fee pays for our time and expertise. You need to pay Google directly for advertising costs. We do not touch your budget settings and you are fully liable for whatever advertising expenses you incur, based on the terms you have agreed upon when signing up with Google AdWords.

Why do I have to pay you and Google?We work as a Google agency and charge clients for the services we provide them - setting up an account or improving the performance of their existing account on Google AdWords. The money we charge pays for our consultants' time and expertise, which you will then benefit from via lowered costs per click and higher sales conversion rates.

You need to pay Google separately for sending traffic to your site, on a cost per click (or cost per thousand impressions) basis.

How many keywords can I target?The keyword research exercise will aim to identify a maximum of 500 keywords that are relevant to your business and are likely to result in sales or leads.

You can add any number of keywords thereafter, though it is recommended that you preserve the campaign set up and add any new keywords in new Ad Groups or campaigns, and take care to avoid any keyword duplication.

What are Ad Groups?Every Google AdWords account is set up in a pyramid-like structure. At the top level are campaigns. Each campaign contains a number of Ad Groups. One Ad Group can contain one or many keywords and one or many ads that get served when visitors search for any of the keywords in the Ad Group.

Ad Groups are therefore the mini advertising units on an AdWords account, consisting of the two main elements that form an ad campaign on Google - the keywords and the ads associated with these keywords. Ad Groups can also specify a default cost per click for all the keywords contained within.

What happens after you set up my account on Google AdWords?Once your account has been set up on Google AdWords, we hand it over to you for approval and to make it live. You are then in charge of your account and its daily / weekly / monthly maintenance.

At the time of completion of our work, your AdWords account is ready to run and drive visitors to your site without any further work from you (except for setting the campaigns live). However, we do recommend that you regularly review your campaign performance, reduce bids on keywords that do not yield conversions and increase bids or try alternative ads on keywords that are performing well, in order to drive more traffic via those keywords to your site.

If I don't get any sales what can I do?If your account drives traffic to your site but none of those visitors convert into sales or leads, the first thing you should do is pause the campaigns and check that there is no physical problem stopping your visitors from reaching your conversion page.

If your conversion process is working, the problem most likely lies in one of two places - your website or your choice of keywords. Our landing page reviews, provided with the PPC set up service, include handy recommendations you can implement to improve your website's conversion rate.

Alternatively, you can use our landing page design services to improve visitor conversion.

If you have not used our PPC set up services, it might be a good idea to start buy requesting us to carry out a Google AdWords campaign improvement, in order to maximise your keyword efficacy and optimise your account to improve overall performance.

What is Google AdWords' phone number?Google AdWords do not provide a telephone number for regular advertisers to contact them directly.

If you need to reach a Google AdWords representative, you can either email them or chat with them via their online contact form.

Can I purchase the same services directly from Google?Google does not offer any such services to small businesses. However, since we are a Google AdWords Certified Company with a large number of client accounts under our management, a dedicated team of Google AdWords account managers, business developers and AdWords optimisation specialists work with us to help us serve our clients better.

Is performance / placement guaranteed?No. Performance and placement on Google AdWords is not guaranteed as it depends on factors such as current competition and your website design and layout, which are beyond both Google's and our control.

What we do guarantee, though, is an improvement in performance of your account, in terms of lowered average costs per click, improved click-through rates or higher conversion rates, failing which we will refund your money in full.

Link Building Questions:

Why are links important?The Google ranking algorithm was based on a system that measured the popularity of a website based on the number of other websites that link to it. This works very well, as the system considers the World wide Web to be like a democracy, with every website being able to vote for other websites that it perceives to be important. Websites with lots of links were therefore considered to be more important and hence were more likely to rank well.

While the Google algorithm has changed significantly over the years, this fundamental ranking system still forms the core of their ranking methodology. It is therefore extremely important to get links from other websites, in order to raise your website's importance to Google. Recent improvements in the algorithm have meant that in addition to the quantity of links, their quality and relevance has also become an extremely important ranking factor.

A website with excellent on-site optimisation that does not have any external websites linking to it is extremely unlikely to rank well on Google.

Why do I need the link building service?Links are an extremely important factor for ranking well on Google. A website with excellent on-site optimisation that does not have any external websites linking to it is extremely unlikely to rank well on Google.

In most industries, competition to rank well on Google is extreme, and a couple of links might not be enough to rank at the same level as your competitors. It is therefore important to either build links on your own or hire a link building service such as ours to obtain additional links to your site.

How many links does my site already have?In order to find the approximate total number of links pointing to your site the best place to go to is http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com.

Yahoo! Site Explorer provides more realistic back-link counts. Google's link count numbers are usually much lower, as they do not reveal all the links for competitive reasons. However, you can still see the number of links to your site that Google perceives to be important by searching on Google for:

link:yourwebsite.com
(where yourwebsite.com is replaced by your actual domain name, of course).

Where must I get links from?In order to rank well on Google, you need to get links from a variety of sources. This includes other websites in your industry, trade associations, local information portals, directories and even social media sites.

Is 15 links (1 month link building) enough?That depends on your industry and the level of competition you face. In most cases, 15 links will not be enough.

Even in industries where competition is currently low, you cannot rest on your laurels as sooner or later your competitors will find out about the joys of ranking well on Google and start optimising and building links to their site, at which point you will need more than the initial 15 links to remain competitive.

How many links do I need to be number 1?Unfortunately, there is no set forumla to calculate this. The Google algorithm considers hundreds of factors when ranking websites, including a number of factors related to links, above and beyond just absolute link counts, such as link relevance, link source content, link source authority, link source link popularity, link age, link anchor text and so on.

A site with just 10 links from extremely important websites such as the BBC and HomeOffice.gov.uk could easily outrank a website with hundreds of links from unimportant websites. It is therefore important to focus on getting a good mix of high quality links and some regular websites as well rather than focussing purely on link volumes.

If I just get links and don't optimise the site, is that enough?There was a time when the Google algorithm weighed links so heavily in importance that websites could rank at the top solely on the merit of the volume of links pointing to them. This system was open to abusive practices such as Google-bombing.

The current version of the algorithm still weighs links very heavily in importance as a ranking factor, but it is extremely important to also optimise the website itself, as on-page factors now weigh quite heavily too.

Do you buy links?No. Google does not approve of companies that buy links to artificially inflate their PageRank and boost their rankings. Since we only use ethical link building practices, we do not buy links.

Is link building ethical?Yes. Google actively advises webmasters to obtain links to their site via ethical methods in order to improve their chances of ranking higher.

Google only frowns upon companies that use unethical techniques to spam their algorithm by buying links or engaging in devious linking schemes to inflate their link counts. We do not indulge in any such unethical activities.

Will Google ban me for buying your link building service?No. Google does not ban websites unless they try to spam or game the Google algorithm. Building links to your website using ethical link building services is not considered spam, and therefore you are absolutely not at risk of getting banned for using our link building service.

If however, you went and spammed the Google index through some other means that we do not recommend, then you could get banned, but that would be entirely your fault!

Landing Page Questions:

What is a landing page?A landing page is the web page that your visitors first arrive on upon clicking on your ad in the Google search results.

In other words, the landing page is the "destination URL" that you specify when creating an ad on Google adWords.

Why are special landing pages better?Google search users have 10-20 websites to choose from when they type in most regular keywords. If your website does not give them what they were looking for, some other website is likely to.

It is therefore recommended to ensure that your visitors see exactly what they were looking for when they arrive on your website, rather than a generic homepage. Moreover, if your landing page is specifically designed to then lead this visitor to a sale or lead generation form, you will see a higher conversion rate and improved ROI on your advertising expense.

Generic pages on your website are likely to be either too broad or not designed purely to drive sales / lead generation. For this reason, it is better to create special landing pages that target visitors from AdWords with extremely targeted content and a clear route to conversion.

Can't I just send all visitors to my homepage?While there is no limitation as to where you can or cannot send your visitors, sending all of them to your homepage is not usually recommended for a number of reasons:

1. Visitors like to see what they were searching for right away
2. Visitors may not be able to find the specific page they need
3. Every extra step introduced into your conversion path will mean more visitors leaving without converting into sales.

Keeping that in mind, most webmasters are better off sending the majority of their visitors from AdWords to either a specially designed landing page or the most relevant page on their website.