January 11, 2012
Google+, SEO
1 Comment
The most important Custwin blog you’ll read in 2012
It’s generally considered rude to use capital letters online as it’s seen to be ‘shouting’ but BIG CHANGES is something that needs to grab your attention because the big changes are going to affect every single business with a website.
Google are making live ‘Search plus Your World’ which, in a nutshell, means that we see the dawn of Google search results becoming much more driven by ‘social’ factors than by traditional SEO. For the full details see the Google blog here. And here’s more information on the CNN leader story.
Very soon, when people search Google for something they will be able to see results personal to them – results that are based on previous searches they’ve made, people they’re connected to, and more. The concept of being ‘number 1 in Google’ will disappear as we know it because each person can feasibly have different search results appear.
An example
Say you’re a holiday company and sell holidays to Canada, and you have a reasonable organic search engine position OR a PPC advert. If someone searches on ‘holidays to Canada’ you will still appear in both organic search or PPC advertising BUT if that person is connected to people that have made comments about holidays to Canada, then that person is going to look at the ‘personal contact’ information before anything else.
Who will that person trust – the viewpoint of someone they know or a company they’ve never heard of? If the person they know says that they should go to Canada via a particular company then they’re probably going to accept that personal recommendation.
Take that concept and apply it to every type of business in existence.
How businesses will die
Here’s what’s going to happen to companies who just rely on traditional SEO and PPC, and don’t take heed to what’s changed…
- Rates of clicks on Google visibility (organic or paid) will drop.
- Competitors will get stronger (if they have acted on the changes).
- Businesses will die.
That’s not being over dramatic – it’s going to happen.
Google vs Facebook
Why are Google making this change? Well, they give reasons via their blog but to cut through the rubbish the answer is simple: Facebook have them running scared.
Google know that Facebook has strong ‘social’ power – that’s why it created Google+ They also know that Facebook could possibly introduce a proper ‘search’ element into their system and integrate it with their existing ‘social strength’. This change is all about Google fighting back against Facebook and ultimately, to protect its PPC revenues.
However, what’s highly amusing in all this is that Google, in allowing ‘social’ to play a part in organic search results are going to take people’s attention away from not just the organic results, but from the PPC adverts. Who is going to click on a PPC advert when they can see commentary from people they’re connected to?
Perhaps Google have a plan on how to make PPC still work within such a new system. I can’t see yet how it would do, unless they radically overhaul the system. But it’ll be interesting to watch and I believe we’ll start to see more financial figures being ‘hidden’ from Google. We could see them disclosing revenues /profits gained from PPC advertising but not the numbers of clicks (because the clicks are likely to decrease over time but Google may have compensated by increasing the costs per click).
In the big changes I see that Google have created Frankenstein’s monster – it seems like a great idea but they may not have quite pieced it together properly and it could come back and bite them.
What should business owners do?
Every business owner, without exception, should get themselves onto Google+ and dedicate time to fully understand how it works. Start off with personal interests and connections and go from there. Become the person who can speak with authority when people talk about Google+ When you’re at the point that you’re searching Google for all sorts of things and you consistently see ‘social’ type results coming up, then you’ll know you’re in the right mental frame of mind.
Step 2 is to empower staff to do the same. The more that staff are connected to and interacting with people they know, the more potential for them to pop up when people are making a search. Say, for example, you’re the holidays company – if a connection of one of your staff is asking questions about Canada holidays and one of your staff has made a comment about them, then your staff member becomes the link between the buyer and you making a sale.
Step 3 is to become a market leader/authority/go-to company. So, using the Canada holidays example, nurture anyone who has been on a holiday to Canada via you – if they make great comments about it via being Google+ enabled then that’s going to spread to everyone they are connected to, who may be searching for holidays to Canada in the future. If you create a fantastic guide to Canada on your website, that’s really useful, then people will mark their approval and so send people in your direction. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do.
Step 4 is to constantly watch your competition. Type phrases into Google related to your competitors and see how they appear in social search. Chances are that for now, there won’t be a lot but over time that will change. You have the opportunity to lead your market.
Those 4 steps are a simplistic view but are a starting point.
As I’ve already said, I don’t often using capital letters but this is probably the most important blog to take note of, and act on, in this coming year. Lucky Custwin clients get relevant input/help as part of the existing arrangements.
“But I haven’t got time for all that!”
That phrase “but I haven’t got time for all that!” rings permanently in my ears. Typically, when I talk about things like blogging, email newsletters, making website content stronger, analysis of website visitor patterns, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. – all things that build online strength and visibility.
But guess what people? Time has run out. All those who have ignored the need to push their online strategies forwards are going to be in for a rough ride and now there’s no choice but to play catch up.
For the sceptics amongst you, who aren’t going to take action, I ask one thing only …
Print off this blog and put it in your file called ‘2013’ within an envelope marked ‘open me in 2013’. Look at how your year has gone and re-read these words – you may find that any downturn was totally avoidable. And if 2012 went ok and all this social search stuff didn’t get rolling as fast as it could (which is a possibility) then take that envelope and change the date to 2014. Whatever the year the decline happens, without acting, it’s going to happen for one reason only: Google have put too much into this and they have a serious competitor in Facebook – they are going to do whatever they can to make Google more ‘personal’ to people, which will damage those companies who haven’t taken action.
There’s a well-worn phrase of “people buy people”. We now enter an era where that changes to “people buy people both offline AND online”. Anyone who chooses to ignore that chooses to kill their business.
December 21, 2011
SEO, backlinks
No Comments
As we get to the end of another year we reflect on what was good and bad about work and life in general. Some things went well, some not so well. We all have the things we have loved and hated about 2011.
My personal top hate for 2011 (actually, it’s been a ‘hate’ winner in previous years) is the concept of backlinks to websites being seen by Google as being ‘credible’ when in so many cases they’re clearly engineered.
As highlighted in the previous blog about How genuine are Facebook Likes (for business)?, if you’ve got the money then you can do anything, including buying backlinks to improve your search engine positioning.
The industry that sells such backlinks has got more aggressive in 2011. Some would say more blatant. It’s no longer like going to a dodgy store and asking for ‘something special’ from under the counter – it’s out there on the shelves to view at will. Disclaimer: I don’t go to dodgy stores (anymore!).
Here’s an excerpt from an email received today …
“…. is pleased to announce that we have managed to move a client from page 39 to page two in just under a month for the term “Window Shutters”
We are currently offering 90 links that varies from page rank 6 down to page rank 3 as a one off fee of £485, and are offering this service to a maximum of 5 new clients.”
Well, it doesn’t get more blatant than that – you pay the company, they engineer backlinks to your website, and you (hopefully) rise up Google.
Let me be clear: I have nothing against companies doing whatever they need to do in order to rise up the Google rankings. Even if they feel the need to pay for backlinks.
What I do object to is the principle of backlinks. Once upon a time it was a good principle – if a website has many links back from other sources then it must be popular and so deserves higher postioning in Google. But for years it’s all been about fabricating such links and the vast majority of backlinks to any website are engineered and not at all ‘genuine’.
Every single day we run analysis for clients, showing them how their competitors are using backlinks from various websites to help enhance their search engine positioning. When we explain how many of those links are gained (usually paid backlinks) and say that we disapprove and that “Google shouldn’t allow it” they look at us and think two things in succession:
“Well, that’s wrong that it works like that …”
“… but if that’s the way it works then that’s what we need to do”.
And it’s difficult to argue with a system whereby Google are allowing backlinks to have such a huge influence on search engine positioning.
But it’s just not right. A company in top position for a certain keyword phrase isn’t necessarily the company that gets the best results or provides the best products (for their customers) – they’re often the company that has invested more in SEO, including backlinks (often, paid).
I sit here and wish that Facebook would get cleverer. That they would build in a search engine that acts more like Google, but lists businesses in priority of those that have had ratings from people we know and people those contacts of ours directly know. Or some other ‘rating’ system that has a social element to it.
It’ll be interesting to see (but unlikely) whether the online landscape has shifted enough by this time in 2012 – to look back on this and have less reason to hate the concept of backlinks as they currently work (for the benefit of companies who feel the need to engineer the system).
December 19, 2011
Blogs, SEO
No Comments
We’ve all seen it – people who respond to blogs we write, hoping that we’ll approve their comment (if we’ve been sensible enough to set up our blog so that it doesn’t automatically let everything through).
Here’s a recent example below:
The blog was called ‘How much does a Google Adwords consultant cost?’ and as you can see in the screenshot, the blog commenter set their name up as ‘adwords consultant’ and also created a link from the words ‘adwords consultant’ – both linking back to their website.
They, of course, would have been hopeful that they’d get a backlink to their website for the phrase ‘adwords consultant’, which helps them a bit in their SEO goals.
I’m not against people having a go at getting backlinks from other people’s blogs but as the example above shows, they usually apply very little intelligence to it. In this case, all they needed to do was have a page on their website which has useful information about choosing an adwords consultant, and then write something in the blog response like:
I agree, it’s a nightmare getting the right advice. Your readers may be interested in a guide I’ve written called Choosing a Google Adwords Consultant, which I feel adds further thinking to this subject.
Although I’d still see that it’s an attempt to get a backlink, I’d take a look at what their guide says, and if I thought it was useful then I’d let them have their backlink because they took the time to put a bit of effort in and it’s also useful to my readers.
Unfortunately, the (in my view, archaic) Google system whereby credibility is given to certain types of backlinks, is here to stay for some time. As the screenshot above shows, it’s not hard for someone to find various websites related to their niche and attempt to get backlinks to their own website. The Google system doesn’t know any better and so the insanity continues.
I don’t have an issue with people wanting to piggyback off what I write, including getting a backlink to their website, but only if they’re providing something of value in their comment, or what it links through to. In time, Google may well be in a position to adopt a similar mindset – it already rejects certain types of backlinks and it will get cleverer over time.
For anyone wishing to get backlinks to their website, that will be long-term considered to be ‘qualiity’ backlinks, there is ample time to get working on that. And if that doesn’t seem to be a top priority right now, consider this …
Google want to be seen as ever-growing (in revenues). When their Pay Per Click revenues start to show a decline they will need a way to boost those again. My view is that ‘their way’ will be a ‘coincidental’ change of algorithm that makes a significant amount of websites dive down the rankings. That change of algorithm will focus on the quality of backlinks to websites. They can probably already do it but are keeping it in reserve for such a time that, as a business, they need to boost their revenues (from Pay Per Click). By releasing such a change in algorithm they make people’s organic rankings take a dive and to stay in business they’ll be forced (short term) to buy into PPC advertising, which raises Google’s revenues again.
It’s coming … it’s just a matter of time. And of course, when it does happen, it’ll be ‘just a coincidence’.
October 14, 2011
SEO
1 Comment
The archaic way in which search engines work includes giving credibility to the number and quality of links going back into your website. However, there are many other factors to consider – including the keywords used in the url of your website.
Many people believe that the main domain name doesn’t matter but there is plenty of evidence to imply that it can have a positive effect. For example, if you type ‘major project finance’ into Google you’ll see the website www.majorprojectfinance.com top of the results. That website has no backlinks to it at all, is rarely updated, and in fact, there’s nothing special about it at all. And yet it’s top of Google – it can only be the fact that the url perfectly matches the search phrase.
But is this fair? Suppose there’s another company that offers major project finance but they haven’t been able to get such a url, or it’s a sub-page within their website? That other company could be the best in the world at what they do but they can’t be visible enough in search results.
Taking another example, if you type ‘formosa gardens villas’ into Google, near the top is the website http://villasatformosagardens.com/. They offer only 3 villas to rent, the website doesn’t appear to have been updated for some time, and the number of backlinks to it are tiny.
Below that website in the Google results is http://www.grandvillasformosa.com, which has numerous villas on offer, a few more backlinks, and is regularly updated. What it doesn’t have is ‘gardens’ in the url but it does have a sub-part of the website that has numerous Formosa Gardens villas.
There are a couple of points to make here …
- It would appear that if you can get a domain name that contains the keywords that you expect people to search for then, in some cases, that can be all you need to get good search engine positioning. However, I’d like to think that the search engines will wake up to that inefficiency in their system (over time) so it shouldn’t be a strategy to rely on long-term.
- From the perspective of a buyer of products or services, the search engines are presenting lower quality results higher up, based on the keywords in the domain name. So if you’re looking for a villa in Formosa Gardens, the higher search results aren’t necessarily going to give you the best results. You would think that the search engines would use other criteria to judge the worthiness of some websites to be listed.
Taking that point 2 above, suppose that http://villasatformosagardens.com/ website had numerous visitors but those people didn’t interact well with the website, but went on to interact better with other websites in the search results? Search engines have all that type of information and you’d think they would use that (amongst other factors) to determine where a website should be positioned when people type certain keyword phrases.
For now, if you’ve done your homework and identified keyword phrases that likely buyers are going to type then buying such a domain name, then that could be good for your business visibility in search engines without going to much other effort at all.
September 23, 2011
SEO, Website Analytics, Website Strategy
No Comments
I was recently listening to a recording by Chris Cardell, marketing guru, and I found myself saying out loud (several times), “noooooooo!”
The recording was an interview with a company who had got to a certain position with their business marketing and wanted to get to the next stage. Here are the abbreviated facts …
- The company (http://www.oceanbathrooms.com/) get over 10,000 visits to their website each month.
- They have increased their turnover to double what it used to be (now £390K), helped along by an increase in website visitors to enquiries.
- They are top of Google for the phrase ‘luxury bathrooms’.
Chris Cardell seemed enthused that the business owner had achieved good levels of traffic through organic SEO and, even though the conversion rate was very low (in the region of 1-2%), his view was that the company should spread their marketing risk (a good idea) by using PPC advertising (a bad idea in this case).
If you have over 10,000 people coming to your website each month and the conversion rate is relatively low, then the worst thing you can do is to send even more traffic to the website – especially traffic that costs money!
From previous client work done I know that PPC phrases related to luxury bathrooms (and component parts of) cost serious amounts per click. If a company had minimal organic traffic and they were fully confident their website was brilliant then yes, PPC would be an option in this sector. But if the company has good traffic already and isn’t converting that at a strong enough level, then it’s insanity to consider PPC advertising.
What made it worse was that Chris went on to advise the company to make the PPC advertising visible internationally as well. An ever-expanding money pit was forming in my mind as I continued to listen to the interview.
It would be fascinating to get a further insight into the website analytics of that bathrooms company – to see exactly which keyword phrase types brought in the most traffic, and how that traffic converted to business. Not having the luxury of that I have to make some assumptions, which are …
Luxury bathrooms as a keyword phrase
That’s impressive to be top of Google for the phrase ‘luxury bathrooms’ but suppose that’s bringing in a significant number of the 10,000+ visitors that website is getting each month (which is very possible).
People searching on a phrase like ‘luxury bathrooms’ will mostly fall into one of the following camps:
- They’re considering having a new bathroom and they’re looking for inspiration, and probably good supplies/installations companies.
- They are looking for inspiration and may want certain products to be bought by their local bathroom installer.
- They may be doing a DIY job on their own bathroom and so will be receptive to buying from a website such as http://www.oceanbathrooms.com.
In my view, the majority of people are going to fit into the first category and certainly, very few would fall into the third category.
So, you’re interested in luxury bathrooms and you find that website top of Google. It gives you lots of ideas and you can see many types of bathroom-related products. Now what? Most people probably want the work/hassle taken on by someone else and are unlikely to buy directly. Here’s what’s most likely to happen …
They see bathroom products that look good and they refer their local bathroom installer to them. That installer has the option to buy from the Ocean Bathrooms website, or get the client to do it directly. However, they also have the option to find similar products from elsewhere, possibly at a cheaper price and also possibly building in a bit of a kickback for themselves.
The end result: Ocean Bathrooms may gain some business but they may also lose a lot more.
I’d suggest that, from the mindset of most people searching for ‘luxury bathrooms’, if they see products they like the look of then they are willing to be guided in a particular direction. And that’s where this website falls down on a big opportunity to make more money. What Ocean Bathrooms should do is research bathroom installers throughout the UK, boiling them down to one or two in each geographic location, who are committed to buy products from Ocean Bathrooms. Those bathroom installers should be committed to:
- Provide an excellent installation and customer care service to the end client.
- Pay Ocean Bathrooms a commission on each introduction that becomes a client.
Ocean Bathrooms then need to create a very visual ‘UK map’ graphic to go into each page of their website, making it very clear that they offer a UK-wide installation service. The landing page from that graphic contains numerous testimonials and bathroom pictures related to all parts of the country. The people who land on that page are invited to make contact to discuss bathroom installation.
- From the perspective of the ‘luxury bathrooms’ searcher it’s attractive to see not just bathroom products they like, but to be offered installation, wherever they are in the UK.
- From the perspective of the bathroom installers that Ocean Bathrooms sub-contract to, it’s business for little effort and they only need to pay a fee for each client won.
- From the perspective of Ocean Bathrooms, more people will buy products and they’ll have the added bonus of kickback payments from the bathroom installers.
I’ve simplified the whole concept there and it needs a bit more detail, but you get the idea.
The fact that Chris Cardell didn’t pick up on this issue about that search phrase of ‘luxury bathrooms’ not linking to a strong enough website message, deserves the “shame on you” comment.
Other keyword phrases
It’s not just ‘luxury bathrooms’ that brings traffic to the website. I searched on ‘luxury baths’ and it appeared top of Google. I navigated down to a page about V&A Limestone Baths (http://www.oceanbathrooms.com/226-v-and-a-limestone-baths) and yes, there’s a good range there but the into page has no reference to prices of each bath. I’m expected to click on the ‘View’ button to go into each one and even then there’s no pricing. I have no way of deciding whether the bath is in my budget range.
As already referred to, even if I did know the pricing, I would still like the option to find an installer (via this website) who could install such a bath properly. It IS good that they have an option to talk to one of their experts (which some people would do), but with no prices on show, most people won’t make contact for fear of then realising it’s out of their budget range.
I would really encourage the business owner to be looking at their website analytics, picking out phrases that get most traffic (e.g. ‘luxury baths’) and really think about what stops most people from making contact, having gone down each particular route within the website.
After identifying issues related to traffic that they do get then start focusing on traffic they don’t get. For example, they’re not on the first page of Google when I type ‘luxury showers’.
Analysis is key
This business owner needs to go back to basics. I can’t see any immediate evidence that he took the Chris Cardell advice about using PPC (lucky for him if he didn’t) and although the business has clearly pumped a lot of effort into their website, they’ve missed out on the importance of analysis.
Google Analytics would help a bit but it’s not really man enough to do a proper job of analysis. They need the ability to look at each individual visitor who typed particular types of keyword phrases, and then analyse their routes through the website until realising where the holes are. This is exactly what we do for clients on an ongoing basis.
There are of course, many more missed opportunities than I’ve highlighted here but this blog is already too long and if the business owner was reading this then they’d have plenty to be getting on with.
So, plenty of good marks to the business owner for having got to where they are and certainly they have Chris Cardell to thank for helping them on their journey (plus a good SEO person). But shame on you (again) Chris, for seeing a strong level of traffic with a relatively low conversion rate and advising them to go down the PPC route to boost that traffic further.
In Summary
Ocean Bathrooms are a company that have the ability to provide bathroom installations at a local level plus supply bathroom products to anyone in the UK and beyond. It would be extremely easy to significantly boost their income by becoming perceived as a company that can provide installation solutions nationwide. It’ll be interesting to see if they pick up on this blog and take action accordingly because currently their turnover is painfully low compared to the levels of website traffic they’re gaining.
September 20, 2011
SEO
No Comments
When it comes to which search engines people use, Google has about 90% of the market in the UK and Europe. However, recent figures show that in the USA, Google has only got about 62% of the market.
Someone (in an influential position, i.e. a buyer of products and services) said to me recently: “I HATE Google and always use Yahoo or Bing”. They had their reasons for hating Google and for now, that person is within the 10% of UK (and Europe) people who don’t use Google as their search engine of choice.
Over time it’s inevitable that Bing will get their act together. Their link up with Yahoo will be properly cemented and they will be in a stronger position. That time will not be quick but it will come.
So, what position will you be in when the UK search engine usage figures start to sway more towards Bing in particular?
Or, thinking about it another way, accepting that ‘Bing’ traffic to your website is probably going to be low for now, regardless of what you do, could it perhaps be worth at least getting that traffic so that you’re prepared for when Bing becomes stronger as a search system?
Some people believe that when you’re visible in Google for a phrase, it’ll also be similar in other search engines. That, of course, is wrong. There’s a test that you can do …
- Take a search phrase that you are already visible under (first page) in Google.
- Type it into Bing.com and assess your positioning. If it’s reasonable then great. If you’re not visible then you’ve got work to do.
Is it all worth it?
Is it worth spending time on getting listed in Bing when only about 10% of people in the UK are using Bing? Wouldn’t it be better to invest more time in raising your Google positioning?
I think it’s probably worth testing on a small scale. After all, that 10% of UK searchers is likely to grow over time and it’s advisable to be ahead of what your competitors are doing.
The first thing to do is to use your website visitors statistics package (Google Analytics would be sufficient for this) and extract, over a period of a month, the numbers of people who have gone to your website from Bing and then working that out in comparison to those from Google. It may be a very small figure but you will at least then know where you’re starting from.
Secondly, having identified keyword phrases that you don’t get first page positioning for (in Bing), you have some work to do. Either yourself or outsourcing it to experts.
Thirdly, after the SEO work has taken effect, and you’ve given it about a month, go back and see what your Bing-originated visits are like compared to those from Google.
Where you want to get to
Let’s say that you want to be highly visible in search engines for the phrase ‘red widgets’. You have first page positioning in Google for that and it gets you 100 visitors a month. By ramping up the Bing search engine visibility for ‘red widgets’ you get an extra 5 visitors a month. Whoopee! It hardly seems worth it huh?
But let’s say that Bing becomes stronger in the UK over time, and you’ve kept that Bing positioning for ‘red widgets’, your Google visits could reduce by 20 and your Bing visits could increase by 20. You haven’t gained much but what you’ve done is be ahead of the movement of searchers from Google to Bing.
So, the maths is:
You before the change: 100 ‘red widgets’ visitors from Google per month.
Competitor before the change: 100 ‘red widgets’ visitors from Google per month.
You after the change: 80 ‘red widgets’ visitors from Google per month + 20 ‘red widgets’ visitors from Bing.
Competitor after the change: 80 ‘red widgets’ visitors from Google per month and nothing from Bing.
Therefore, your competitor has lost 20% of their website visitors and you’ve kept yours.
You have time on your side
Bing won’t have any strength for a long time yet. It could be 1 year, 2 years, or more, before they start to take away the eyeballs of the Google-dedicated UK searchers. But it’ll happen and you have plenty of time. If nothing else, I recommend this:
Make a diary note at 3 month intervals and for that diary note to say something like:
“Does Google still have 90% of the UK searchers? Is it time to focus on Bing more?”
That will give you a reminder to check the Google domination figures and if you see those figures start to drop then it’ll probably be time to take action. But be aware – your competitors may have already started before you.
September 10, 2011
SEO
1 Comment
Warning: it’s a bit of a long blog but it all leads up to what I feel is an important discussion point at the end …
If you have any interaction with Google, particularly about issues with search engine positioning, everything seems to come back to one word: quality.
In short, Google make great claims about wanting their search engine to provide the best experience for searchers.
When it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO), Google have the luxury in that they don’t give away the secrets behind what does and doesn’t work but they do often make it clear that the websites that will win are those that offer a quality experience.
But what defines ‘quality’?
Over the years people have used methods to try and ‘beat Google’. Reciprocal links, keyword stuffing, and many other tricks have been used. Many of those tricks are supposedly no longer effective and yet we all see websites that are clearly engineered to beat the system.
Let’s say you have a website and it’s all about widgets. You fill it up with great content that is without doubt the best widgets information in the world.
And that’s all you do. You don’t engineer backlinks into the website or do anything else. It just sits there. You, in short, have the highest quality website on the subject of widgets in the whole world.
And the tumbleweed rolls by your door because Google doesn’t give you the credit for that quality. That happens because, being effectively software and algorithms, it doesn’t understand ‘real’ quality and has to use other methods – most notably, backlinking.
If you type a phrase into Google, the chances are that the companies that appear highest are those that have engineered backlinks to their website (or had someone do it for them). While it’s supposed to be true that not any old backlinks are good enough for Google there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. In short, the more backlinks you have to your website pages, the more credibility you have with Google. And Google seems to think that using backlinks (quantity and quality) as a measure is adequate.
So, going back to your fantastic website about widgets, there may be other websites about widgets that provide inferior information to yours BUT they’re higher than you in the search results. How can this be? Could it be because they’ve engineered things (including backlinks)? This begs the question:
“If websites appear high in Google, that provide inferior information/services/products compared to those below them (often, much lower than them), then how can Google judge them to be ‘quality’ enough to appear at the top?”
There are so many examples of businesses engineering their positioning. Here are just a couple …
Hog roasts everywhere
I’m looking for a local provider of hog roasts in Cornwall so I type ‘hog roasts Cornwall’. In second position of Google I see a link to http://www.hog-roast-direct.co.uk/hog_roast/hog_roast_Cornwall.htm, which looks like the screenshot below …
Now I’m looking for a local provider of hog roasts in Liverpool and after searching for ‘hog roasts Liverpool’ I see a prominent link to http://www.hog-roast-direct.co.uk/hog_roast/hog_roast_Liverpool.htm. Looking at the screenshot below, does it look familiar?
You could type all sorts of variations and find replica landing pages, differing only in the location name.
From the perspective of the hog roast buyer, who is looking for a genuinely local company, is what they see a ‘quality’ search result? No, it’s a site that via the page http://www.hog-roast-direct.co.uk/online/cateringquote.php pulls in enquiries, which will probably be cherry-picked and the others sold on to other companies around the UK. If you look down the bottom of that Quote page you’ll see yet more SEO trickery that has helped them gain their positioning.
Is what they’ve done ‘wrong’? No – they’ve just understood how to beat the system. However, I’d argue that it’s wrong from a human perspective and that Google really don’t care.
Garden BBQ top position for one page
If you type ‘garden bbq’ into Google, the top result is http://gardenbbq.co.uk/. If you click on anything within that page it’ll take you into the Taskers website (e.g. http://www.taskersonline.com/categories/Cookshop/).
What’s happened here is that Google has allowed a one page website, acting as a doorway into another website, to be top of Google. I’m fairly sure that such things are supposed to be frowned upon by Google and yet, the evidence is there to see it goes on. In this case it doesn’t actually matter from a human perspective but it does make a mockery of Google’s preaching about ‘quality’.
So why does Google allow it to happen?
Two answers here:
- PPC advertising
- Lack of vision
If there’s one thing to remember about Google it’s the fact that without PPC advertisers, it’s dead in the water. There are only limited organic positions available on the first page of Google and it just happens that those companies who know how to beat the system (or bring in help to do it) will be dominant. Anyone else who wants to get first page Google positioning, regardless of how good their product, service, or information is, has two choices:
- Join in with the crowd, creating backlinks, and all sorts of other methods to ‘beat the system’.
- Pay for PPC advertising.
Because option 1 is so long-winded and usually involves time and money, option 2 is what keeps Google thriving.
Time for change
Being high in the search results means nothing about the quality of the service/product/information provided. It means that the website owner has found ways to engineer their position.
All the time that Google don’t have a serious competitor (Bing is still so far away from cutting into its market) then it has no incentive to change. It will still reap the benefits of PPC advertising and however much it preaches ‘quality’ of search results, the system is inherently not about real quality.
What will change the situation? A competitor to Google who finds a better way to position companies in the organic search results and links a revenue model to that. People want to get services/products/information from sources that have genuine credibility and I believe that they should expect search results to be linked to genuine quality.
If every company in the world had the option to pay something paltry like £100 per year (scalable by size or organisation of course), to be part of a service/product/information quality checking system, run by a major search engine, and they knew that the higher the grading they get, the better the search positioning, what would happen?
As an example, if Custwin signs up to such a scheme then there’s an obligation that all clients go into the checking process. After a certain period of time the quality of services provided are checked by the search engine (directly with the end client). Then, after a further period of time a further check (or more than one check) is made. The end result would be an average ‘score’ across all clients.
Could the end result of this being an important factor in search engine positioning?
Standards of services/products/information would rise, the cowboys would fall out of the business system, the search engine would have a decent revenue model (upwards of £100/year multiplied by millions of companies is a no-brainer), and people would have much more confidence that what they see on the first page of the search engine has real quality attached to it.
Discussion/debate anyone?
I’m conscious that I’ve whisked over the concept of how a major search engine could topple Google (or Google themselves could change) but if it’s of more interest to discuss/debate in more depth, please do get in touch.
August 30, 2011
SEO
2 Comments
Backlinking seems like rocket science to many companies and while it can get quite complicated, there are some things that most companies can do.
First of all, for those who don’t know, a backlink is another website that links back to a page within your website. The more backlinks you have, the better for your search engine optimisation.
However, don’t be fooled. If you use a cheapo service to generate you hundreds or thousands of backlinks to your website then don’t be surprised if you don’t get great results. Before you run out and get all your contacts to create links to your website, look at it from the viewpoint of Google – is it really a relevant link if your friend, the florist is giving a backlink to your website that focuses on widget making? Nope!
There are many companies who have thousands of backlinks to their websites and yet they are lower in Google than competitors who have focused on the quality of backlinks rather than purely the quantity.
So where’s a good starting point for you? First of all you need to determine who you consider to be competition. What phrase do you type into Google and it bugs you that a competitor is quite prominent on page 1?
Taking an example, the phrase ‘antique clocks’ brings up http://www.gutlin.com/ at the top of Google. That particular website has thousands of backlinks to it and, to be honest, would be nigh on impossible to beat unless a huge amount of effort/money was put into it. However, we can learn a lot from looking at the backlinks to any website. In the case of Gutlin, just one of their backlinks comes from the page http://nickhardeman.com/blog/?p=213. It’s a link from a PR3 page (which is good) and the page itself refers to clocks, which makes the link relevant.
If you look at that http://nickhardeman.com/blog/?p=213 page you’ll be wondering where there’s a link to the Gutlin. If you do a search on that page for the word ‘Marconi’ you’ll get taken to the part as shown in the screenshot below …
If you hover over the words ‘Brian Marconi’ then you’ll see that it’s a link back to http://www.gutlin.com/. The words ‘Antique Clocks’ are also a link back to http://www.gutlin.com/ and it’s this latter one that’s important. From Google’s perspective, a website page that is about clocks, has a backlink called ‘Antique Clocks’ that links back to a website about antique clocks – one tick in the box.
So if you were an antique clock dealer, what would you do? Exactly the same – create a profile and post a response to that blog. Make it at least believable that you’re posting for reasons other than to get a backlink and you won’t fall foul of the website owner.
Hey presto! You have just created a relevant backlink to your website. OK, you’re just replicating what a competitor has done but it gets you started on your backlinking journey.
But of course, you’re probably NOT an antique dealer. You may also not know how to analyse what backlinks are going to your competitors websites? We’re quite generous at Custwin – just let us know what type of phrase you want to be visible under in Google, and who one of your competitors are, and we’ll give you some free (no strings) insights into their backlinks that will be useful to you. Also, if you want to know how many backlinks you’ve got to your website and where they come from then please do let us know and we’ll give you that info for free.
August 29, 2011
SEO
No Comments
Someone recently asked me to explain Google sitelinks and because the way it’s work has recently changed I thought it worth making a blog out of it.
An example of how sitelinks has changed can be seen in the screenshot below, which is what you see in Google after typing ‘custwin’ …
Prior to the change, Google would have displayed the names of sub-pages in the results but not the further detail. As shown by the example on the Google blog, the sitelinks are now providing a lot more information so that people have a better idea before they start clicking on links.
As individual companies you have little control over what sitelinks are displayed – it’s Google’s algorithm that decides that. However, you have the option to use Google Webmaster Tools to demote some links that are appearing, if you want to.
Over the years I’ve recommended that companies keep an eye on how they appear when people type their name into Google. This has been mainly related to just being aware of where your company name appears but the issue of sitelinks changing makes this more important.
Here’s an example …
We typed the name of a company into Google – Alpha 1 Security. When you type that in, you get the following view …
The good news for them is that they appear top, complete with sitelinks to relevant sub pages of their website. However, there are other companies who have the same name of Alpha 1 Security and, as you can see from the red arrows in the screenshot above, they’re not top of Google. Whereas previously they would have been closer to the top, the increased depth to the sitelinks has the effect of pushing them down the search results page while shouting out “click on this top company – they’re the best”.
What this means is that Google has made a decision about which ‘Alpha 1 Security’ should be positioned top and given all those juicy sitelinks displayed underneath. It will have based that decision on various factors but mainly on how well the website is structured and visible to the Google bot. Clicking through to those other two websites it’s very clear why Google doesn’t consider they’re worth putting higher. In brief, they’re appalling websites that don’t deserve to be higher.
If you are a company that has a fairly distinct name/brand then as long as Google likes what it finds on your website then you’ll see yourself at the top with sitelinks included. You should be aware though that you are allowed up to 12 sitelinks and so there may be further opportunities to improve your website.
If you type your company name/brand and you’re not top but others are, along with sitelinks, then you have some work to do!
August 16, 2011
SEO
No Comments
I frequently hear companies saying that they want to be high up in Google for a search phrase that’s extremely competitive. They are usually companies who have made minimal effort with their websites and online visibility but yet they feel that for some inexplicable reason, Google will welcome their website into the first page of search results.
There also seems to be a perception amongst many companies that SEO experts can suddenly magic up great Google positioning, within a relatively short period of time, and for a budget that’s woefully inadequate.
Taking an example, if you offer Nile cruise holidays then you may want to be visible on the first page of Google for the phrase ‘nile cruise holidays’. And so does everyone else want that same visibility, because that’s what most people search for. The screenshot below gives one view of how competitive that phrase is. Don’t worry about the detail – just note that red means difficult to beat, green is easier to beat, and amber is inbetween …
Although most people type that ‘nile cruise holidays’ phrase, it’s extremely competitive and you wouldn’t stand a chance of getting in the first page of Google unless you’re going to spend a serious amount of time and money. The SEO battle is too big.
However, if you pick the phrase ‘nile cruise and stay holidays’ then you’re picking a battle that, although not a walk in the park, has more potential to be won – the prize being first page visibility in Google. If you look at the screenshot below you’ll see that the ‘red’ isn’t as dominant as in the previous screenshot and so the phrase ‘nile cruise and stay holidays’ is one that you could feasibly get visibility for in Google …
Taking this a step further, if you want to make it even easier on yourself, pick a keyword phrase that’s even more niche. The less popular the keyword phrase, the more chance you have of picking an SEO battle you can win. Admittedly, you won’t get anywhere near the levels of website visitors as you would have if focusing on a really popular keyword phrase … but some traffic has got to be better than no traffic, which is what you’ll get if you pick an SEO battle you can’t win.
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