The issue is deserving of an entire post, and indeed there is a comprehensive one over at SEO-Chicks by Julie Joyce which sparked me into writing this very article.

The issue here is, should you report a competitor for buying links?

For me the answer is generally a yes. As someone who doesn’t buy links, it’s incredibly frustrating to be told by Google not to buy links, and then see no action taken on those blatantly breaking the guidelines. I hate to do this as I feel like a ‘tell tale’, but the fact is that it can otherwise be impossible to outrank a competitor who is buying links, without paying for links yourself.

So these are your options:

1) Buy links yourself to outrank them – risky but in some industries it’s accepted as essential.

2) Report them and cross your fingers Google takes the appropriate action. Which, may I add, for me should mean devaluing the paid links rather than handing out massive site wide penalties.

When is the answer No?

If you buy links yourself and then report a paid link that’s pretty unethical in my book. You must be clean cut and not breaking Google’s guidelines, otherwise you’re setting yourself up for someone to do the same to you.

So what do you think? Would you report a site for buying links, or do see outing a site as below the belt?

Tis the season to be jolly, and Firebox.com certainly should be. This is because, in my humble opinion they’ve got their Christmas online strategy spot on.

Their website is at the cutting edge of usability, they rank pretty well in the search engines, and their use of social media is exemplary. Add to this great customer service; and their business must be looking pretty rosy right about now.

As a case study there’s a lot that other websites can learn from them, so here are my favourite 5 things for an online marketer to take away from Firebox:

1) Usability:

I find the firebox website really easy to use at the best of times but I’m particularly impressed by their use of Ajax on their Gift Finder. For their product range and customer type this way of browsing the products is really cool and must aid conversion rates. I personally was persuaded to buy a load of stocking fillers!

2) Customer experience & resulting engagement:

Orders are shipped out fast. I placed my order and got my goods the next day. Included was a free delivery code for my next order; and although I didn’t get any I hear most customers get some free sweets in their box! It’s a nice little touch which makes customers feel engaged with the brand and want to come back.

The resulting engagement is really impressive. They get a lot of reviews, as many sites do, but notably they get numerous video reviews sent in by chuffed customers. These not only demonstrate brand loyalty and customer interaction but will notably have a great impact on conversion rates, and will help with link building and SEO.

3) Social Media

I follow @Firebox not only because it’s good fun, but also to learn about how to run a Twitter campaign. They currently have 7000 followers which isn’t a tremendous amount, but their interaction is superb. They run daily competitions getting loads of entries every time. Every entry helps spread the Firebox brand and directly promotes a product. Very clever.

They also use Facebook to good effect, and I reckon both of these channels will provide tangible results for them. Take a look and get some inspiration for your brand.

4) Innovative link building

Firebox have a couple of campaigns on the go which will draw links for all the right reasons. They were bang on top of things with the royal mail strikes with their Royal Fail game. This was a great viral game which not only spread word of their brand but will have acted as a good piece of link bait.

They also have innovative campaigns such as their Global Secret Santa product which will undoubtedly create interest in the site and again build natural links.

5) Shopping Cart

I found the checkout process really smooth and loved the use of ajax throughout the checkout process. It meant that requested info was kept to a minimum as forms generated as you selected things such as your card type – eg once Visa was selected only details appropriate to Visa cards were included. Take a look and see if there are lessons to be learned at this vital conversion point on your own website.

Before you ask no this is not a sponsored post! I have just thoroughly enjoyed my experience of dealing with Firebox, from finding them through their Social Media campaign to receiving my products – and beyond. I don’t only recommend them for some cool Christmas gifts, but more importantly to take away some tips on how to improve your own website and service.

So what is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation is the art/science of making a website rank well in the search engines to increase visitors to that website. It’s also the single most important online marketing practice to be aware of (queue comments disagreeing with that one!)

If you’re just setting off in the world of online marketing you need to get to grips with SEO, and I strongly recommend you become as knowledgeable as possible about it. Luckily the basics are pretty straight forward, and if your website isn’t in a competitive industry you can get some big wins by getting the basics right.

So firstly a simple summary of how Google works:

Google crawls a website and adds it to it’s index. When it crawls a site it ‘reads’ all the content, and even the images to understand what the site is all about. Then when somebody performs a search Google decides what the most relevant websites are for that search. The content and structure of your site are know as ‘on site’ ranking factors.

Google doesn’t only base it’s rankings on what it find on your site though. It looks at how many other websites link to yours, and the quality of the websites that link to you. These external links are known as ‘off site’ ranking factors. Links are widely considered the most important of google’s ranking factors, particularly when targeting competitive keywords.

How to get started with SEO:

1) Keyword research:

Before you start optimising you site you need to know what keywords you are aiming to rank for. The factors you want to consider are:

a) The search frequency of a keyword. There’s no point ranking for a term that nobody searches for.

b) The competitiveness of the keyword. Look who ranks for a keyword, check out their link profile and consider if you are going to be able to compete. For example there’s probably very little point in a new website targeting a terms like ‘Bingo’, ‘Poker’ or ‘cheap flights’ unless you have massive time and financial resources.

c) The relevance of the keyword to your website. You want to rank for terms which are going to achieve your aims. So identify what you want a visitor to do on your site and what terms are likely to drive relevant visitors.

There are some good free tools for keyword research including Google’s Keyword tool and Google Insights for search.

2) Page title’s:

Arguably the most important onsite ranking factor. Make sure you include your top keyword targets in your page titles. Make every page title on your site different, and as relevant to the page as possible. Remember as well that the page title becomes the main description of your site in the SERPs, so try to word it well to aid a good click through, possibly even including a call to action.

You also need to be aware of meta descriptions and meta keywords, but these are not widely believed to be important ranking factors anymore, at least for Google, so i’m not going to cover them here.

3) Internal linking

You need to tell Google what every page is about, and the best way to do this is with internal links. When you link to a page use descriptive anchor text, ideally your target term for that page. Never link with terms such as ‘Click Here’ as you’ve just missed a great chance to tell Google what that page should rank for.

4) Header tags:

Within your content use header tags. Use one h1Tag per page to tell Google what the main subject of that page is. Use h2, h3 etc for subheadings.

5) Links

You need to build links to your website. This will tell Google your site is well respected and every link works as a ‘vote’ for your site. The better quality the links the better your site appears in the eye’s of Google. To measure the quality of links you can use Google Page Rank as a rough guide, although the importance/accuracy of that is in question. Look at the back link profile of site’s and make your own mind up if it appears to be a quality site. Linkscape is another tool you can use to measure the authority of a site.

Link building is such an important area i’ll write an entire post on the beginners guide to link building over the next couple of weeks.

6) Read Googles guide to SEO. This is the best guide for beginners and will explain best practice SEO in simplistic terms.

This blog post is only a basic guide to help you understand a little bit about SEO. There are a massive amount of other factors to look at but hopefully this will give you a start, and begin to get your site ranking.

If you’re an SEO expert please leave your beginners tips in the comments to help extend this guide.