Search engine optimisation in Oban, Tobermory, Argyll and Bute
A business or person listing in SERPS - search engine results pages - can be a much misunderstood process and one shrouded in mystery for most.
Main Street, Tobermory - one of the places I work from
But it is actually quite straight forward.
found us can help you with this area and here is a nice little commentary the practice of Search Engine Optimisation, and of how we can help.
Have a read below and don’t hesitate to say hello.
SEARCH ENGINES
We all use them. Mostly Google in the UK with over 90% of searches coming from this one entity. But when you consider sheer numbers of searches you also need to look to other players. For example Bing.
A search engine is effectively a database of websites across the UK (being UK specific here.) A user types a search and results are delivered on a web page, know as a SERP or search engine results pages. The viewer clicks on their desired result (also known as listing or from a Geek point of view, snippet) and is taken to that website.
Here I am talking about natural listings and the paid for ones (separate article to come on this area) commonly know as Sponsored Links and normally positioned to the top of the results page.
Technically all business is a numbers game. The more people though the shop door, the more likelihood of a sale. And you encourage potential purchasers of a product or service by stock positioning, attractive packaging, price, accessibility (is it in stock?)
Same applies, as has been discovered, to the web. The online shop so to speak. A customer finds you via a big shopping mall (Google) after typing in a search query. They decided to enter your store versus others by clicking on the search result. Your search result is your invitation to a potential consumer.
On then clicking the link the user is taken to a website. From here a number of factors come into play.
Think of all of this as a sales process as defined by the acronym for the sales structure AIDA.
Attention - obtain a customers attention within the many results that are shown.
Interest - create interest via your result title and body copy (known as a Result, Listing or Snippet.)
Desire - match the customer need with your product or service benefits as detailed in the result, snippet, or listing.
Action - on creating desire we stimulate the customer to click on your result.
The searcher has a need we want them to fulfil this by their clicking on your search engine result, and being taken to your product or service. Your part to play is well written copy that captures the searcher’s attention and matches the need they have as expressed in the search. We’ll come onto the actual website after that.
A SIMPLE 2 STEP PROCESS - SEARCH TO CLICK AND WEBSITE
STEP 1 SEARCH TO CLICK
It is NOT simply about copy writing with SEO - search engine optimisation. Well it is, but there is a little more to it.
You have to really go back to basics before even looking to a website. And you can blow a lot of marketing money on an ill produced website.
Our task is to match the search intentions of the customer. In search we refer to brand and non-brand terms. Brand terms relate to your business brands including products and services. Non brand refers to all other terms. For example “Coca-Cola" versus “soft drink”. And you need to optimise for both.
Search Terms / Search Queries
Q: how is someone going to find you via a search on a search engine?
A: use you pre-existing knowledge of the customer and your marketing. Blend with what you observe from online and search data.
Remember the acronym - WHATS.
What do you make? How do you make it? To what area to you sell to? To whom do you sell to? What special features do you have?
You need to get back to basics and evaluate what you make and sell, whether service or product. And what might be exclusive to you. Such information can form the basis of deciding what search terms you wish to use for your business, its product, its service.
You need to understand who your customer is and get inside their head. How do they think? How are they likely to find your product via a search engine query/search terms?
This can be aligned with offline point of sale and marketing activities. How would someone find you in the “real world”? How would they find you in a shopping mall, a superstore? How does your ambient media appeal to users? We need to get back to basics of how we meet a customer’s need at the point in time when that need coalesces?
Search engines are databases and there is analogy with a big shopping mall, or superstore. How does the customer find the shop you sell from or the product on the shelf if they were to ask the passer by?
For example we are a business that runs a hotel in Oban, where there are many other hotels and accommodation providers. You know from your marketing and customers that you are found via people asking about “hotels in Oban”, “hotels in Argyll and Bute”, or the name of your hotel “Peter Cobley Hotel”. You now have queries that translate well to the web.
Online data and research
Search words, search queries, keywords, search terms are basically one in the same thing. It is what the searcher enters into a search engine.
We are now beginning to build up brand and non-brand search terms.
But we also have a wealth of online data that we can mine from our website, free, and paid for tools. Examples can be Google’s Analytics, or Search Console, or some very sexy paid for tools.
Zapier have kindly provided a neat article: The 11 Best SEO Tools in 2025.
Search listing, snippet, website copy
This is where we go back to AIDA - the sales process that applies in all cases. It is a crucial fact that life for people is not divided into web and non-web. But as businesses we can think this way.
Your search engine copy and web copy is your traditional point of sale and both must interact with each other, customer, and a search query. It should fluidly follow the searcher’s thinking “I need a hotel in Oban, I can see Peter Cobley Hotel, and the hotel is both central and showing a 10% offer. I’ll have a look and click”.
Pixie dust and magic
I am not going to go into the more technical side of things. But the following rules apply when it comes to getting “good” search engine results for your chosen search terms.
The higher up the listings on SERPS mean more clicks.
Getting the higher positions can involve “working” the hidden stuff that makes Google what it is, Bing what it is etc.
You may have heard of PageRank, algorithms, viewing and click rates. Blah, blah, blah. But don’t panic - it is not as complex as you think.
Paid listings (PPC, Pay per click) interact with each natural search engine results.
How your website performs is a factor in your position for a search term.
I AM NOT GOING to cover this bit off, suffice to say we know about it in detail and can explain all to you. AND the above is not a definitive list.
The view from the found us office
STEP 2 LISTING TO WEBSITE
Copy and “themes”
When the user arrives on the website it is ideal that the copy reflects the search term they used especially a specific one relating to product or service. The same principles apply as in any offline sales process. For example, if we have successfully navigated the user searching for Christmas pud to the relevant aisle and Christmas pud cannot be located then we have wasted a lot of marketing effort, unless our particular customer is happy to search.
Same applies for the click from listing to website. If you drop the user onto the home page when they are searching specifically, e.g. “double room in Oban hotel” then don’t be surprised of a high bounce rate as users leave the site.
Thematic copy and process is so important. And what do I mean by this? The user is following a train of thought and we have to mirror this in the copy and it positioning.
This is where skill comes in as we look to the very bare bones of a website and how it functions as both a sales, information, or tool vehicle.
I have focused on retail in this post but am at pains to explain that not all websites sell product and service, and that the above does also apply.
It is about structuring your website of linking its copy and disparate parts to search terms and listings, of optimising for what the customer wants and needs of a website. OF NOT OVER OPYTIMISING FOR SEO and so reducing a customer facing means of engagement to a mere amalgam of search terms.
Conversion rates
They all stack up if things are done correctly. AND I did say at the start that it is a numbers game.
You appear on page one of the SERPS for terms, thus reaching a large number of searchers.
You have a good click through rate of good, qualified customers on your search engine listings.
The customers who hit your website stay as the content is relevant.
The customers convert to sales or whatever metric you work by beacuse they want what you offer.
We can deliver on the above for you, and it is NOT EXPENSIVE OR COMPLEX, and we can teach you how to do it yourself. No need for an agency, and we will be the first to advise this.
OUR SEARCH ENGINE CREDENTIALS - WHY PETER COBLEY AND FOUND US
A December’s working week in photos.
And what a fine place to live and work - Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Oban.
found us
Nice “Ad People” and the reality
Mad Men (and Women.) But as I discovered mostly men.
I pen, well type, from Tobermory as Storm Darragh lashes against the patio windows. Claire is in Killin to be with old school friends enduring a drive that saw a trapped jack knifed lorry and VW car in snow; and I can now breath a sigh of relief after speaking to her.
I looked briefly at LinkedIn, which I now lump under the category of “time wasting social media” and rued my doing so as I saw a post by an individual who I don’t have a great deal of respect for. I did in the olden days but watched him corrupted over time by what he believed in himself to the point of his becoming detached from reality and sadly his empathy and love for people, with career and Mamon becoming his Gods.
I was also tasted bile as he was sat at my old University in Lancaster??!!
I bemoaned his being there as it is one of my sacred places, but I recognised he was there for one of his children who I realised is studying there, which is fair enough.
The emotion passed but I learnt from it. I remembered anger is a natural emotion to be welcomed and it is a question of what you do with it. I cannot change the fact I came across on LinkedIn a person who is a not so nice person, and more so when they dress themselves up as being a) nice, b) God’s gift to digital advertising.
All I can do is keep my side of the street clean. He has to live with himself and his “dirty hands”.
Please note that I have not provided hypertext links to external content to encourage people to have a good root around as to what’s on the Web.
People, Places, Things
In the life I have had with a career in advertising I have come across people who have “worked me over”, “taken advantage”, and less politely “screwed me over”. (One of which I just refered to having seen a post on LinkedIn.)
It was and is the nature of working in the advertising, marketing, and media trades.
It is the nature of working in senior leadership roles.
It is the nature of an exponential career rise, as was the case for me.
And it’s not just people who go drive you insane, hurt you, stitch you up, lie and the rest. Places and things can also bring out strong emotions in you; maybe a place you worked at, or something like a project for example you were involved in, or an event and happening that still stings.
Advice on the Past, the Future, the Present. (People, Places, Things.)
People, places, and things can drive you nuts if you let them. And what can often be forgotten is where they sit contextually in time, be it past, present, future. And this is important for the generation of emotions, of how we react, our very mental wellbeing.
The first thing you must always do is look only to yourself and what you are thinking, feeling, and therefore behaving. You only have control over yourself.
In having control over yourself you focus on your side of the street. Using whatever method of goal (dreaming) and plan setting to achieve what you want out of life.
Perform a SWOT analysis and also look at how you function (point 7.) With SWOT you want to get an idea of who you are, where you’ve been, and where you are currently going.
Also look at the Johari Window.
There are four core or recognised self evaluation maintenance models, for example Gibbs or Tesser. Best bet if you want to evaluate yourself is to read up on them.
Bring all you observations as to self together in one consummate reading. This way you’ll have a feel for where you sit as a person.
How you function or act must also be examined as well. This was touched on at point 3. A good way to look at how you function is to read from Stephen Covey and learn about his Quadrants of Time Management. Are you in Quadrant 2 and being effective with your time? The point simplistically is to ask, “am I working smart?”, “am I working effectively?”
You NOW HAVE a full evaluation of who you are and how you act. This is your side of the street that you can work on.
Back now to people, places, and things. Through working on self you are able to indirectly control how external people, places, and things (events included) affect you. You can never control them directly and this is a bridge of understanding and awareness you have to cross, and yet so few of us do, and waste time focusing on other people and things as we try to control them. Imagine yourself as the theatre director putting on the show; do you actually control all, or merely exist within the show guiding where necessary? Do you really control your actors for example? Really and truly? Well the answer is no.
Yon only really control your fate via control of your own mindset and action; and from the past work you have put into self.
The plain old fact of life is you cannot control other things including people, but you can influence via self-management. And this is a crucial learning that I only recently accepted and implemented. I wish I’d done this sooner. But high achievers and driven people achieve up to a point through control, but the truly successful ones are those actually let go of trying to control and work on self - it is counter intuitive.
And that my friends is the trick. And with it comes serenity because one is not burdened down by other people, places, and things. You only have to focus on number one. This does not mean you travel through life in isolation. You have to interact. But paradoxically you gain more control by letting go of concerns, whether past, present, or yet to come (maybe.)
With this learning I was able to leave a certain person to his own fate and not worry about his popping up at Lancaster University. I am able to know who I am, am comfortable and happy with myself, and make amends where necessary. I have achieved in my own way. I wonder if he is really happy at all what he has done in his life. But that is not my worry any longer.
Don’t waste your time on other people, places, and things.
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
Seneca in his letter to Paulinus.
Sunday morning after Storm Darragh passed through.
2 pictures and 2 different found us
It is a funny old world in my life at found us in terms of locations. I currently type from Costa Coffee in Ashton under Lyne, and Claire was on a walk in Tobermory earlier and sent a photo of the bay. I’ll be there for the Easter hols. Just thought it funny in terms of locations and the juxtaposition of the two images (Tosser use of big word alert.) It is funny how location can alter the business mentality I have, its reception, and how I approach things. For example, Tobermory and Mull lend themselves to calm, thoughtfulness, and a considered approach to life and business and a distinct lack of not chasing money.
Sunday 24th March 2024
Been tidying up the website and discovering some wobbly internal links (D- and must do better as official web master) and thought I’d write a brief entry.
Ashton town centre has been nice today and not crowded, in fact positively civilised. I suspect people are out enjoying the nice weather. Blue sky with fluffy clouds which make me smile as I think of the song Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb. A legendary song by a legendary duo, and I groan as I now realise it was released in November 1990. Christ on a Bike that was 30 years ago and I was three months into my first year at the University of Lancaster.
I’ll have to head back to the house in Dukinfield for the simple reason I am starving and have food that will otherwise go to waste. But may grab another coffee en route, from Starbucks.
Slow day today in my being sedentary but have already got a lot done on the laptop.
Biz meetings and new business
Am out in Manchester next week if you fancy a catch up and am on the hunt for new business in the form of senior head hunting briefs and consultancy work. But not desperate. Quality not quantity and in the words of Basil Fawlty, no riff raff please.