Duplicate Content Penalty

A good number of webmasters and ecommerce marketers have been reporting a drop in traffic for the past month or so. What’s happened is Google has tightened or stengthened its filtering of duplicate content. Google considers duplicate content a problem because it generates poorer quality search results. You can see their point when the top ten results are gummed up with the same page from 2 or 3 sites. So, they’ve gone about dealing with this issue.

Google reiterates that it’s not a penalty unless they believe you’re doing it deliberately.

It’s not uncommon that businesses publish their web content to more than one domain. ecommerce sites especially often have a US, UK and Canadian version. The first pages is different but the backend shopping cart products and descriptions are generated from the same database. It seems perfectly logical to customize and personalize for those respective audiences. Regardless, Google wants to force web site owners to stick with one site.

ecommerce and large information site owners have found their sites losing traffic. The keyword tailing traffic is what has fallen off. Keyword tailings is a term used to describe the thousands of odd phrases that searchers use (e.g., digital cameras). Not the most popular phrases but ones that have lots of keywords in them (e.g., sony digital camera 100 x digital zoom). The dropoff in traffic really hurts small ecommerce sites that live on these unusual phrases and even big ecommerce sites that previously had huge traffic.

Google has a filtering method that clusters similar pages together. It counts the keywords in them ,along with title tags, text links, and headings to determine whether that content was redundant. It’s had this filtering for a long time, but only lately have they ramped it up. After the filter is run, the pagerank distribution in the site is changed and pages that once brought in traffic don’t rank as well. Their pagerank has been stripped. Google picks and chooses which pages will be shown in the results and often that is not the page you want to have ranking.

The benefit for Google is that companies who getting free organic traffic now may have to begin doing adwords advertising to gain visibility on those phrases again. That would be a huge boost in Adwords revenue if applied to hundreds of thousands of ecommerce sites.

To get over your duplicate content issue, you need to make your content unique in every respect. So the art of SEO copywriting is needed to make your content look unique to Google. And it is an automated algorithm that judges its uniquness and relevancy. It can be frustrating when Google really doesn’t tell you what factors are involved. They just spout the usual “Create unique, valuable content and everyone will enjoy your site”, advice, but their way of assessing content still isn’t compatible with how most content is devised and and written.

There are ways to maintain each of your domain’s rankings, but one thing for sure is that you’ll need to rewrite your content so it is unique and relevant at the same time. Not an easy task. The issue of managing a network of websites is suddenly not so easy anymore.

Read more on Google’s duplicate content issue. Google’s advice is not easy to implement.

One of the reasons I use wordpress blogs is due to wordpress’s handling of duplicate content issues which is a big problem with blog content categorization.

Contact me about content development and SEO.

Keyword Research

I use a number of keyword discovery tools and techniques to find the best variety of keyword phrases. Finding popular keyword phrases is easy, but finding all the less used phrases or variations isn’t so easy. For an SEO, these other words are very important in the optimization process. These are words we also use to fine tune Google’s understanding of our web pages. We manipulate Google’s keyword understanding of the pages and get higher rankings by using a creative mix of words. Very often, synonyms, related and associated words, along with stemmed variations are used to create a more dynamic presentation to Google. The copy and links are what Google and other robots spider. By making them accessible to the robots, we are in effect presenting the pages to Google. We get to speak to the search engine and convince them that our client’s pages are the most relevant resource on the topic.

What’s important to know about how Google indexes keyword phrases is that it uses a lot of filters to deal with repetition and tone that down, and it uses semantic analysis too. That means it looks for words that are related to or associated with, or synonymous with a keyword phrase. If you type in ~loans for instance, you’ll see words that Google believes are similar to loans. Yahoo and MSN use similar semantic processing.

By looking for related words or even modifiers, they’re hoping that they will better target the real meaning searchers have in mind when they search. Google has a lot of search tools people can use to search, but sadly few people have the time to learn them. Most searchers want the search engine to do the hard work for them. People simply add extra words in their search query to hopefully get the sites they’re interested in.

Google Search Tools give clues for SEO Professionals

The Google wheel is another indicator of semantic relevance. In this graphic above, other terms are offered up by Google. These can be clicked on for even further related phrases. This type of search tool can be very useful when you’re investigating a topic you know very little about. It can help you ask the right questions or make the right queries.

Keyword usage in your copy and links is a more complex matter than you’d imagine. With billions of pages available on a particular topic, Google, Yahoo and Bing have to filter in the most relevant ones. It does that by trying to read between the lines so to speak to get a deeper understanding of what the page is about and whether it is a valuable resource. By optimizing your site at a deeper level, your pages will be considered richer, deeper and more relevant for thousands of keyword phrases. There’s no telling what words people will add to their basic searches. In SEO and high rankings, it’s all about building relevance.

Is the First Link on Your Page the Most Important?

In years past, the first links on the page were treated more importantly however search engine indexing has improved and they collect and assess all of them now. Although in this video, Matt Cutts says don’t worry about it, if you make that first link on the page keyword relevant, Google (Yahoo and Bing too) will spider that link first. It makes sense that this will help you shape the path Google takes through the site and help it take a keyword optimized path you have laid out for it. A professional SEO consultant can help you plan your navigation strategy to ensure you get the best overall search engine rankings.

Optimization is about reducing aimless spidering of your site, and fashioning the routes through the site. It is complex to optimize links and content for this purpose but well worth it. If your SEO or webmaster is relying on rel=”nofollow” code to shape pagerank on the site, it doesn’t work well enough. Google knows everyone is doing it and will disregard some nofollows. Obviously telling Google not to visit the pages that visitors are visiting is a little deceptive and Google may indeed absorb the pagerank on those particular links.

Need help with link optimization on your site? Why not have Bay Street SEO help you improve your rankings and build traffic the right way? Call us for a review of your company or ecommerce web site.

Optimizing Links on Your Pages

Does Google Treat all the Links on your Page Equally.

Google ranks sites by following or spidering clickable links on your pages. Google considers the links to be a voice or recommendation, a sort of chatter in the community that might indicate where good, relevant content is. The link says something about the page it is pointing to. If each link on the page is a voice, Gooble listens to certain links more than others.

Many website owners believe there is no difference in which links Googlebot will follow and respect on their pages. In this Matt Cutts video, Matt explains how Google treats links differently. Links in the footer such as a text link navigation menu help with optimization, yet the weight they carry in the algorithm is lower than links found in the body copy. Nav links are often repeated from page to page, and these links use keywords that are not relevant to the main topic of the page. That’s another reason why footer links are minimized in their ranking effect. The key to optimizing links and text content is in strategic variety. This is how I get Google to take notice of and respect a particular set of links.

If your corporate site uses standard navigation schemes without variety, it can seriously lower your search engine visibility. One SEO technique is to use no follow code and insert a few text links near the main body copy, but Google is aware of these common tricks and others. They delete their effect, and your corporate or ecommerce site is again left with the lame standard nav menus to let Googlebot spider the site. That’s not the experience or route you want Googlebot to take into your site. It’s important to know which links Googlebot follows and how to optimize its spidering of your site.

Optimizing your site navigation or page to page linking is very important. It’s just as important as your text in your pages. Get a professional SEO consultant to optimize your site. The performance improvement is more than worth it. Enjoy the ROI improvements our clients have achieved.

Google Can Spider Javascript and this can upset your rankings

Matt Cutts, Google’s lead search engineer discusses Google’s improved spidering of javascripted links. Up until recently, SEOs like myself used javascripted link code to keep Google out of certain areas of the site. This can still be done. However, Googlebot’s improved capability to follow these links mean pagerank and other ranking resources may be wasted or used poorly. This can effect rankings. It’s one more facet of SEO techniques that must be managed by a modern SEO.

Find out more about SEO Services and inquire about revenue sharing as an alternative to traditional fee based SEO remuneration. There are different creative approaches to revenue sharing and all cut the risk and lessen the cost of SEO. If cost is an issue for your business, then this is a great solution.

Sales Doubled But Traffic Dropped by 50%

Reduced Sales has Changed everything for ecommerce sites

During the past few years, a lot of attention has been focused on improving sales conversion. With traffic diminishing during the recession, business owners had to get the best performance possible. Unfortunately, many are at a loss about what needs to be optimized.

Sales Conversion Improvement – What Makes Customers Buy?

Sales conversion is the process of creating a customer out of a visitor. In years past, traffic was the key imperative. The belief was that more traffic was sufficient to ensure greater sales. Not much was known about visitor’s psychological or shopping profiles therefore an appropriate web site content and site navigation strategy couldn’t be devised. ecommerce store owners and corporate webmasters simply crossed their fingers and hoped for the best.

When the recent recession hit hard, even websites with a lot of daily traffic found their sales conversion rates were dropping. In some cases, traffic from search engines dropped by 50% from the levels seen in 2005/2006. With fewer visitors searching for products and searching for different benefits (lower price) most ecommerce site owners needed to learn more about shopper’s new motivations and purchase triggers. Some turned to their Google analytics stats to help gain a better understanding of how people were entering the site and what content attracted them and which turned them off. Google analytics services have improved allowing us to drill down to more actionable information. Google website optimizer also offers an opportunity to test different types or styles of content to see which generates improved sales.

Conducting testing on an ecommerce site is something most ecommerce managers don’t like to do. Often the websites weren’t designed for such experimentation. Testing is important and has to be done in a fashion where variables are controlled. Otherwise the reliability of the results might be questionable. Still, every ecommerce web site can be tested to improve sales conversion. In the process of swithing items and product descriptions, you’ll learn more about what your visitors are thinking and their likes and dislikes. In the long run, this could mean the difference between succes and failure.

SEO Improves Conversion Rates

Often, through the process of optmizing a website, conversion rates increase. This is due to the fact that most visitors come from search engines, and when the site is keyword relevant, it is more useful and comfortable for them. Keywords are easy to see and undertand. The keyword focus keeps these visitors in their comfort zone. Keywords that are hyperlinked or at least have a different color, are more credible navigation cues. People trust plain text links to click on more than they do graphic buttons. A graphic is often considered a sales-oriented cue, not an information source. Graphics are used for the call to action. People believe buttons have to do with a purchase commitment, and often they’re not ready for that when they arrive. However, when consumers want to purchase something, a graphic “buy now” button is the best way to go.

Efficient and Helpful Customer Experiences

Time is money even to a shopper. That’s why some product details have to be included with product pictures. But which details and how do you describe them? Optimization of the product details and how they’re organized is important to search engine rankings (Google Shopping Results) and to the customer.

If this is done correctly, it can enhance search engine rankings and rankings in Google shopping results. Google and other search engines like it when your clickable pictures offer clues as to what the product is about, so visitors know whether that product page is worth visiting. A short, precise keyword-laden feature and benefit is the best way to give Google what it needs to know. Google looks at words near the clickable picture. Its ranking algorithm assesses and analyzes them.

When keywords (and product details that are important ) are used, you increase the visitor’s desire to click through and investigate that specific product further. Rather than being too simple, you’ll want to provide specific details at this point in the customer’s visit. Many ecommerce sites provide non-customized information, or information provided by the manufacturer on product descriptions. It’s a standard text branding promotional blurb that’s often the same for all their product lines. That kind of duplication hurts many ways. Everything needs to be unique to the degree possible.

ecommerce product listing optimizationis an art that helps products get listed higher in Google shopping results. Google shopping is an increasingly important source of sales for ecommerce web sites. And the competition for rankings grows daily.

Below is an example of a typical product introduction. This one is for golf clubs. The graphic only shows major golf brands, many of which are unknown to the visitor. And a search engine cannot read graphics nor extract any information about the specific product page being linked to. The result is poor search engine rankings and confusion for the shopper. Most golfers are looking for a particular feature or benefit. They believe buying a new driver will improve some ailing aspect of their golf game.

Unhelpful Listing of Golf Brands

Some retailers believe the buy now button is all the navigation clues a visitor needs. In fact, a visitor wants to see product pictures, details, and shipping info readily. Making a visitor click around to get the info is one way to lose that customer. You’ve got their attention, give the right information that builds interest and gives them a reason to buy – your call to action.

Golf Driver page now gives clues as to where they might find the right club for them.

This revised graphic provides information about each brand of golf drivers. Not much info added, but it provides the type of benefits/features golf shoppers have on their minds. The difference between one golf club driver brand and another is negligible. On this site, the owner believes the brands are the only sales tool he needs. I don’t believe brands can do it, simply because the visitor will be visiting many other sites with the same golf brands. He needs to provide differentiation for both search engines and his visitors.

The point is to facilitate better navigation and make the shopper confident that they can achieve the satisfaction they want. Never let the shopper flounder. And this is a frequent problem on large websites where there are many types of visitors and thousands of products. The visitor loses focus and gets confused and discouraged. That’s when they try to leave and the website launches a pop up with a big discount. You don’t need the big discount loss if you do it right the first time.

By giving a shopper a distinct mission, they might find a driver they like and buy it. If some golf brands offer better profit margins, then they can be subtly featured or emphasized. The whole point to improving sales and search engine rankings is to provide trustworthy clues to better site navigation. It keeps visitors comfortable and moving toward purchase. It also gives search engines the word clues they need to be able to index and rank your product pages.

I’ve seen this sales conversion process work wonders on a hotel site, bath and beauty site, sports apparel site, and many others. With the first puchase in the bag so to speak, the ecommerce software can offer additional purchase ideas and it won’t annoy the shopper. Their primary mission has been satisfied, so now they’re relaxed and won’t be averse to buying something else like a box of golf balls or a new hat. Even if the keyword optimization reduces brand visibility, keyword variety, and lowers total search engine traffic, the resulting sales improvement was worth it.

Learn more about SEO and what’s wrong with your ecommerce site from an experienced, proven SEO Company.

Google Updates Pagerank

Google recently updated their link popularity factor named Pagerank. Pagerank is a complicated mathematical calculation of the importance of web pages. You’ll see it in the Google toolbar if you have the toolbar installed in your web browser. You can get it here: http://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/index.html.

Google Toolbar Ranks Each Page in Green

Many clients are aware of Pagerank ratings of their pages while others are not. Two of my clients had their homepage jump to a Pagerank 6 from 3 and while that sounds very impressive, Pagerank is just one factor Google uses in determining search rankings. Having a lowly Pagerank 3 isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however it can signify that an insufficient effort in link building has been carried out.

Other factors can weaken your Google rankings despite having high pagerank. To estimate Pagerank (on a scale of one to ten) Google adds up the number of links pointing to your site along with the portion of pagerank coming from each of those pages. If you have plenty of links coming from other high pagerank web pages to your website, it means your pagerank will grow. Think of it as a currency being deposited into your bank account. Yes, withdrawals can happen. Sometimes pagerank from a particular site can be blocked. It’s a tough process to determine whether a link from someone else’s site is helping your rankings or not.

Occassionally, Google will recalculate Pagerank (about every 3 months) for all web pages in its index. If the pages that link to yours lose some of their Pagerank, less will be coming into your site. The result may be a drop in your rankings. Google can block other types of data collected too including trustrank and keyword reputation. When or if your rankings have dropped it requires some study of your links to determine what happened. If your pages have no pagerank, it means they’re either new or Google doesn’t know what to think about them. It can’t collect enough information about the page so it refuses to apply a Pagerank to it. This is corrected through improved search engine optimization.

Pagerank still is a vital component of their ranking algorithm, however it’s important to acquire other types of ranking power from other websites. It’s also important to have expert level optimization applied to your own website. Enjoy your new high pagerank. Sometime in the near future, you may see its power come fully into effect. It’s important to be calm and patient in this game of SEO. A good SEO Company will give you the ranking power, trustrank and keyword reputation you need, and ensure your site is all it can be.

Do you need someone to take a look at your site? Contact me at 416-605-7026 for a private, no obligation review of your site and situation. Your business is important and it’s wise to get it performing at its best. I’ve been a full time SEO consultant specialist since 1998 and should be able to help you maximize your search engine presence.

Do Your Site’s Pages Load Fast?

Google announced what they call “Site Speed” (everything has to have a catchy marketing tag) which is a measure of how fast your web pages load. While most websites load at about the same speed, some pages such as dynamically generated ecommerce content, web 2.0 content, and long blog pages can load slowly. Most sites don’t have to be concerned that their page loading times will affect their rankings, however those with lots of slow loading scripts (add in content) could be in for a shock.

It’s hard to say what Google’s reasoning is adopting Site Speed. Most slow loading content isn’t spiderable anyway, and as long as Googlebot picks up the main text portion of the page, it should move on. It could be that Googlebot is having trouble spidering quickly. Google recently tried to respond to real time indexing by adopting the new Google file system which allows them to spider faster and collect more information. By collecting more, these slow loading pages can present a problem. They have to spider, so they’ve done some Public relations to encourage webmasters to clean up their coding. Web 2.0 coding is very distributed with content coming from all sorts of other sources. That can slow things down. If you read some forums, you’ll see many people blaming Google’s adsense scripts for much of the slow load times. Their solution – get rid of Adsense. I don’t Google considers Adsense a factor in slow load times, but really it is the predominant form of web advertising on millions of sites.

With respect to SEO, it’s important to consider how clean your web design is, how much content you’re putting in each page, and whether your web servers are too busy to give Googlebot the material it is asking for. If you’re hosting with a company that has tens of thousands of sites on the same server and IP address, it could mean Google thinks your Site Speed is poor. Better review your hosting quality.

In this presentation, Matt Cutts, Google lead search engineer describes the need for Site Speed:

Has your site’s performance flat lined and you’re wondering whether the big successes will happen in 2010? If you’re still reading right now, it’s pretty certain you’re not confident. Bay Street SEO company has served clients in numerous industries from around the world. From million dollar hotel successes to online casinos, banks, financial services companies, marketing firms, and small ecommerce shops, we’ve helped our clients get close to ther potential. And SEO offers a far better return on investment than any other form of online marketing. Take a look at some of our client’s and client’s clients, companies that have had great success using SEO.

Optimization Strategy – Keyword Usage is Changing

Keyword Strategy is your Biggest Challenge

Over the years, keyword usage by public searchers has changed. Certainly the core popular words are used, but now searchers are supplementing basic searches with additional words to drill down to find specific information. The recesssion too has temporarily limited searches for some products or services that were highly sought. Laser Eye Surgery for instance is an expensive cosmetic medical procedure and of course searches related to that procedure have fallen. Real estate related searches have fallen dramatically too and are only now recovering. It’s hard to find a keyword phrase that hasn’t diminished over the past 4 years. There are exceptions however. The iPhone continues to grow.

Finding popular keyword phrases and building optimized content and social media presence for them can pay off well. Building a strong wide “keyword reputation” makes your site more relevant to more searchers.

Google Trends Search Volume for iphone

Google trends is a good tool for identifying trends on major, high volume keyword searches, but not so good in identifying the long tail phrases that are important to most businesses. These are the many varieties of keyword phrases that are less used and often more specific. People will add words to a basic search (e.g., laptop accessories, long beach ca). Long tail phrases are less competitive. Formerly, it was easy to rank well for long tail phrases. Then Google changed its algorithm and made it more difficult to create relevance and pagerank for endless numbers of keyword phrases. Now, it takes skill to make a site rank for hundreds or thousands of keywords. It’s not enough to have very high trustrank or pagerank. The algorithm is complex and subtle in analyzing both on-page content and inbound links. Believe me, this is a challenge.

In this video, Christine Churchill discusses keyword research with Web Pro News:

Looking to rank higher and improve conversion? Call me now at 416-605-7026 to discuss your challenges. Never settle for mediocre performance in SEO. Hire an accomplished and dedicated SEO company.

Comscore – Future of Search

Google now Recommending Brands

Search Engine Land just reported Google is experimenting with brand recommendations in its search results. It’s not known how this is playing out, however as the screen capture of a US-based search shows below, the top brand camera manufacturers are being shown on a search for digital cameras. It is likely that the brands shown will be those listed in Googlebase feeds. Which brands will be shown and what factors will determine which are listed is open to speculation. The Googlebase feed (which is used for submitting products to Google Shopping) is unique. Perhaps Google could weigh the collective ranking of sites that carry each brand of digital camera. Pagerank, Trustrank, and keyword reputation all play into rankings on Google shopping.

Google Brand Recommendation

What’s odd about Google brand recommendation is that the big brands will get a big boost in exposure, while lesser known brands will suffer. And, less searches will be inclined to click on Adwords ads. Google is making ridiculous amounts of money on Adwords so it can afford to give away free leads via Google shopping and Google local, but I’m not sure a brand recommendation adds a lot to the user’s search. Brand differentiation in common products such as digital cameras, cell phones, and laptops isn’t all that extreme. Ask the average shopper which brand is unique or more valuable, and they wouldn’t know. The shopper is likely looking at othere important features and benefits of the product. Certainly brand value can have an impact, but it’s secondary to other benefits.

Do you optimize your product feeds? Googlebase optimization should be another component of your ecommerce strategy and a part of competent, strategic SEO. Call me now for a free review of your website and rankings and discuss what can be done to improve your visibility. Canada’s best SEO Company is ready to help.

Search Engine Strategies Conference Toronto London San Francisco

I’ve had the pleasure of attending 3 search engine strategies conferences in years past. One in Toronto, another in San Jose California and in Dallas Texas. Search engine strategies conferences bring together hundreds of SEO, Social Media, Advertising, and marketing people to discuss the state of search engine marketing and its future. The SES Conference in Toronto is coming up soon. If you’re new to SEO, social media and search marketing, it is a fun and interesting presentation. They have separate tracks for beginners and more advanced individuals. Expert level SEOs may not gain much from attending, but it is fun to meet some leading minds in the industry. At San Jose SES, which is held right at the Google complex, the event has grown exponentially over the years.

Why do people attend the SES Strategies conferences even at $700 for one day? It’s the feeling of being part of this amazing industry called online marketing. And search is front and center stage when it comes to Internet marketing. SEO is central to any companies profitability, even if they’re also engaged in other online marketing campaigns. Search engine optimization and its ROI often makes other forms of marketing viable.

SES Search Engine Strategies great for building morale and urgency

U.S. economy to grow 3.1% says Conference Board of Canada

The Conference Board of Canada just released a report that predicts the US economy will grow nicely this year mostly due to business spending. The Ottawa-based business agency says U.S. gross domestic product will expand 3.1 per cent, almost matching the 3.2 per cent growth the group predicts for the Canadian economy.

“With demand slowly starting to improve, firms are having to restock their inventories … a sure sign that the economy is starting to turn around.” says Kip Beckman, the Conference Board’s principal research associate in forecasting and analysis. Beckman expects consumer demand in the United States to grow by 1.8 per cent.

US Companies are ramping up production in anticipation of growing demand and to replenish inventories. US Home Sales increased too. Home sales rose more than expected in March, reversing three months of declines, as government incentives drew in buyers and is launching a be a strong spring selling season. In Canada, new home sale have recovered very strongly. Consumer confidence is up.

If Canada is a market you haven’t ventured into, it could be the success story of 2010 for you. There is huge demand and the Canadian dollar is at par with the US dollar. And search engine optimization of your web site or creating a new Canadian based site might be all you need to capitalize on this opportunity. Call us to discuss how we can help you make Canada profitable.

Time to Ramp up Your SEO?

There’s good news coming out of the US and Canadian economies. So many companies have put off their organic search engine presence and social media presence. That’s a reasonable response given how little hope US economists had in their economy. Canada is doing very well and stands to continue to grow regardless of the price of oil and natural gas. The UK is a question mark still. Good thing the UK didn’t get tied into the Euro currency.

Now that retail sales and manufacturing are showing a turnaround, you may want to commit to the decision to optimize your website and to follow through with the whole SEO process. Organic search engine optimization is the mainstay of any successful online business today. And what business can afford to ignore the Internet? This medium is only going to grow.

By launching your SEO strategy now, you’re more likely to be successful this summer and fall. Google wants stable search results, and that means it wants to see your pages and links for a while before it will give them full credit. That’s why rankings mysteriously rise over time. You don’t want to rely on luck as many web site owners do. Rankings and visibility can be controlled and raised. It’s a creative and strategic process that we do every day.

New customers are always interested in traffic and ROI projections, however estimated traffic and ROI in SEO is very difficult. It amounts to nothing more than an educated guess. Success in search engine rankings and visibility depend on the budget, site content, site structure, willingness to be engaged with the web, and the sophistication and experience of the search engine optimization expert. If you’re thinking of hiring a spammer or ad agency to do your SEO, consider how much you’ll lose in exposure and sales. SEO is a bargain if it’s done well. If not, or it’s underfunded, it’s more than likely going to fail.

Experienced Specialists Over Deliver on Results and Responsiveness

Yes, SEO is almost always successful if you have a commitment to it, however there are no guarantees that your particular site will rank in the top 3 for good keywords. To create real customers, we know from experience that top 3 rankings are critical. These are the creme of the crop customers that haven’t been contaminated by competitors propaganda and are action oriented. CEO’s and competent marketing managers want excellence and hiring a professional SEO company is how you achieve top 3 rankings.

Google Caffeine

Google wants its results to be very up to date and to compete with new search engines that serve up very recent news and content. It created the “Google Caffeine” update as a marketing gimmick to make it appear in tune to the new social media scene and things that are happening today. This is a big change.

Google caffeine is a name given to the most recent change in how the search engine calculates its results. Yes, they give things like that names. This is the Internet, a database sorting change has a cute name It evokes images of early morning news or fresh air, or hopped on red bull or something.

With Google Caffeine, more improtance is being given to new, updated content. If your content is old and hasn’t been updated, with new content added, it may have a negative effective on your rankings. The social media site phenomena has forced Google to spider websites more often. A blog hosted on WordPress may be visited every hour whereas Googlebot (Google’s program which collects webpages) may only visit some websites once a month. If Google is visiting your webpages once a month, it probably doesn’t think its all that important or relevant. Today, relevance is critical so you definitely want Google paying attention to your site.

A new Blog is a great way to introduce fresh content and persusasive ideas to visitors. It can help educate them, although propaganda is also popular. Blog’s are a great way to add value, although they can take a lot of time to create and administer. Your blog should be a real part of your online strategy, otherwise it may not be effective. It needs SEO just like your company site.

The whole idea behind Google Caffeine, is to pay more attention to the latest news and views – to tap into the voice of the new Internet. The latest content showing up on the web however, hasn’t been screened well for authenticity and credibility. So by allowing such unfiltered content into their search database, Google is vulnerable to spam and deception.

The key thing to remember about Google Caffeine and real time search engine optimization is that your search engine optimization strategy should incorporate social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs to support your site’s rankings and relevance. The web is changing from a static environment which Google served well to a multifaceted and interconnected framework that shares content. The web could evolve to make Google irrelevant. The company built on information relevance is now facing its own life and death struggle to remain relevant to consumers demanding a broader and more interesting array of content.

Find out more about Google Caffeine and how it is affecting your web site’s visibility in Google search results.

Social Media Strategy

You’ve probably heard the term social media bandied about on some of the online marketing sites you’ve visited recently. Many social media pundits are predicting the demise of Google and search engines with the reasoning that the younger generation has found blogs, facebook, twitter, and other such sites as more relevant and meaningful.

Are social media sites important to your medium or small sized business? Can these sites generate real, new customers or create customer loyalty? Although social media web sites and web site add ons are popular and seeing continued growth, it can’t be said that they can be revenue generators for a business.

As an SEO Company, Bay Street SEO develops a social media presence more for the purpose of supporting a strong presence in search engine rankings. The problem with social media is the culture and usage styles of the sites. People using social media sites want more to discuss, collaborate, or even argue about an idea, product, service and they might not come to any conclusion that would cause them to make a decision. All marketing activities are designed and orchestrated to generate a buying decision. That’s hard to do via social media. You can certainly present, or talk about your products on a blog, facebook page or twitter post, but the medium itself is more of a playful one. It’s more about opinions, and therefore the recommendations don’t carry enough weight. In future, marketers will improve on that aspect, thereby generating sales revenue.

This blog is a social media site. Based on what you’ve read so far, are you encouraged to make a buying decision right now or just carry onto other blogs and sites to read more? Social media is an endless dialogue, however, you can shape opinion and brand images. That can help grow the intention to purchase if it is orchestrated well. To be effective, your blog or facebook page must be viewed and that pretty well requires strong search engine rankings. Search engines is where the visitors come from. If Facebook and Twitter can evolve their services (which is possible), they may develop their own search engines, thereby replacing Google. Google knows this is happening and has made changes to their algorithm to make their search results more “hip” and current. Recent changes made have presented a challenge to SEO people.

Currently, social media sites are the homepage of kids and teenagers. And this is a space that is very unlike Google or straightforward banner ad space on commercial sites. The interaction is between people and it is personal and advertising and product promotion is difficult to carry out. In fact the discussion can even erode brand value. There’s no way for a brand owner to control what’s being said. Even with targeted advertising, the sites produce a disappointing outcome. It’s a very different place, these social media web sites. As facebook evolves, it may shape the sites so commercial enterprise is more prominent. Facebook and Twitter are both tackling that problem now. Facebook is the most visited site on the web, yet the type of activity taking place is frivolous as far as corporate marketing is concerned. Twitter as shown here can be a great way engage visitors in the moment – creating a dialogue and discussing topics in a way that isn’t possible on your corporate website.

Twiitter: It's all about Now

If you’re planning a social marketing strategy right now, it is wise not to move too much of your budget away from SEO. At first you might not see your rankings and traffic suffer, but as Google adjusts your site’s presence in its database, you’ll undoubtedly see your traffic and quality of visitors drop.

So if that’s the case, why are companies even thinking about social media as a key marketing medium? Well, most of it is hype. Hype comes from users who have discovered novel communication tools such as Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Marketers are making a noise because they hope it might help them deal with the Google monopoly and create a cheap yet effective marketing medium.

The other reason is that it is more difficult to rank well in Google search results today. The ranking algorithm is more complex and quick fixes or simple approaches are not as effective as they once were. Even Adwords ad campaigns are not producing the revenue they once were, yet pay per click prices keep rising. Google itself is grappling with the social media threat and are reluctant to commit to social media and Facebook and Twitter are too big to buy.

It is wise to pursue a social media presence with a comprehensive strategy. Be aware though that much of your expenditure won’t pay off anytime soon. By using an SEO Company, your social media presence is being done with a purpose — to create lasting rankings in Google. All of your effort and funding goes to creating free organic search engine referals. If it works, you’re laughing.

Matt Cutts SEO

Matt Cutts is Google’s lead algorithm engineer and head of what they call their Spam team. In this video he describes what amounts to not doing SEO in favor of doing Google friendly optimization. It’s generally a good idea to accept Google’s advice with a grain of salt since it is usually offered in response to most viewer’s desperate attempt to improve their own site’s rankings. He mentions Google Caffeine which is the key improvement or change in how they index web pages. Caffeine is about real time indexing which makes Google’s results very up to date. In some cases, such as a wordpress blog may be updated very quickly. I’ve seen my client’s blog posts updated within 10 minutes. That means we can get into topics first and get visitors who are really into a particular topic.

Learn more about SEO and our search engine optimization services now.

What is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of designing or modifying the content and structure of your website so that it ranks highly in search engine results. It is an art/science of manipulating words on your web site’s pages, and other web site’s pages that link to your website.

Most SEO services focus on ranking highly on Google search results, since Google has an monopoly on providing search results. Google’s pre-eminence in the Internet search industry means its method of ranking web pages is all important. Google has developed a very complicated method of collecting web pages and then ranking them for relevance against a particular keyword search. They assess a variety of factors or website elements and give each a weighting factor. Some factors such as inbound links pointing to a page are more important than others such as headings in the page’s body text. No one knows what Google’s indexing algorithm does for sure. We can only test and postulate on how each of the 200+ factors are used and combined in ranking search results.

An SEO company or Consultant provides guidance on how to develop a website so that its pages are accessible to search engine robots which read and collect the information, and so the pages will be considered very relevant for those searches. A page that looks very good, has excellent content, and is reputable, may in fact never rank at all and never been found via Google’s search engine. It is an SEO’s task to ensure the page is found and is valued by Google.

Optimization means keywords (the words people and potential customers use) are used strategically within the text content of the page. Optimization is must more than just placing keywords in the page since millions of similar pages have keywords in them as well. Google assesses how the keywords are used and tries to read between the lines to determine topical relevance. This is because many billions of pages have been deliberately optimized to appear more important or relevant than they really are. Google works to try to filter out these pretenders. An SEO knows that Google wants to minimize this clutter and must avoid having the optimization done in a way that leads to it being caught in database filters. These database filters look for redundant content, duplicate content, over-optimized content, and engineered content and deletes them from its database.

Optimization describes the process of matching site structure and content to what Google considers ideal. Knowledge of general SEO techniques is easily discovered through forums, books and how to articles however Google is well aware of general techniques. They set their filters to catch these obvious SEO techniques and the cancel their effect.

To be effective an SEO consultant and content generator will design unique content that matches Google’s search engine algorithm. When it looks natural and random, Google will generally consider it valid. However, who links to your web pages is important to. Your SEO Consultant will contact and negotiate a link on someone else’s website and this link to your site validates the importance of your web page to make it rank high. Finding these Web sites to acquire links from is a major job for SEO companies. A professional SEO consultant or SEO company excels at these tasks which is why you shouldn’t do SEO on your own. Hiring a professional is critical to ongoing success.

SEO vs Adwords

Don’t let your immediate revenue needs prohibit you from committing to Search Engine Optimization

It’s one of the most important decisions business owners have to make. Should you focus your marketing on SEO and web site development or just open an adwords account? I’ve been fortunate to have been able to have clients who have used both SEO and performed Google Adwords campaigns. With the future of their companies dependent on the outcome, it was important for them to choose wisely.

Normally, SEO is far more productive and the ROI is normally substantially higher, however in some industries and keyword sectors, pay per click campaigns (Adwords) can be very productive. Google’s huge and growing multibillion dollar profits every quarter are primarily from Adwords advertising revenues. Advertising continue with their Google Adwords campaigns so they must be working. However, most marketing managers are never glowing about Adwords costs. You’ll hear most advertizers claiming they can’t make any profit. In essence, that is the whole game with PPC. Adwords is a monopoly and it drains every cent of profit out of advertisers budgets.

PPC can be moderately effective if the product or service you’re selling is lucrative with high margins. In this case, it’s often temporarily profitable. Once competition increases, the bid prices become so high that there is little profit to be made by anyone, except Google.

One of my clients was bidding on keywords in the $20 per click range. It was just the nature of that financial service that they could actually pay $20 per click and make a profit. In that keyword area, consumers tended to click on the Adwords ads on the pages not just because they dominated the page, but because quality of provider wasn’t an issue. The advertisers were buyers of a financial instrument, a form of mortgage insurance, and consumers believed that even advertisers were legitimate providers.

Contrast that to a search for a SEO Consultant, where no one clicks on an ad, because the consumer is looking for someone legitimate, a proven expert whose own site ranks high in the search results – ostensibly proving his merit. In some keyword areas, people will click on ads. In fact, they may click on lots of ads which drives up profits for Google.

Adwords campaigns have no residual value. Once you stop paying they’re gone. SEO on the other hand lasts. In fact, that particular client’s rankings are still top ten, two years after I last worked with the site. That proves the long term value of SEO, even in the “freshness era.”

If your PPC ad campaign is going to work effectively, you must have high sales conversion rates. To convert visitors to sales, your ads must be well written which is not easy given the ad text has a max 24 characters and can’t use superlatives. Adwords tends to push all advertising to its base level – pushing commodities. It’s very difficult to differentiate your product or service in 24 characters. That means your ad landing page has to be very effective in informaing, differentiating, generating interest and intent to buy.

Adwords campaigns are often outsourced to companies in India that work for a couple of dollars per hour. From what I’ve seen, they offer very poor value. You could run your campaign yourself and save the 20% commission. Generally speaking, the profit made from adwords campaigns equals the cost of the ads. It’s a breakeven scenario every time. Not something you want to get stuck in.

Some major hotels and airlines might actually register a profit from Adwords, however I know from experience in the travel industry that SEO generates ten times the revenue of Adwords. If a CEO or marketing manager has a long term objective, then hiring an SEO company is the only choice.

Another point in organic online marketing is that when you spend on SEO and Social Media, it encourages you to improve your site’s content. It’s your content that is the face of your business. People want information and disclosure no matter what they’re buying. If you’ve run Adwords campaigns and discovered the underwhelming results, you know first hand that Adwords is a very costly, short run approach to marketing. With no residual value, it leaves you vulnerable to low price marketing and competing with no differentiation. A cynical, unmotivated visitor from advertising makes a poor long term customer.

Search Engine Marketing Forecasts

Forrestor Research published their most recent report based on a survey of 204 marketing executives from firms with more than 200 employees across multiple industries. It polled them on what online media they were focusing on and committing to in the years ahead.

Interactive marketing will near $55 billion and represent 21% of all marketing spend in 2014 as marketers shift dollars away from traditional media and toward search marketing, display advertising, email marketing, social media, and mobile marketing. This cannibalization of traditional media will bring about a decline in overall advertising budgets, death to obsolete agencies, a publisher awakening, and a new identity for Yahoo!

Forrestor Research Survey Results - Online Marketing

Now we know there’s a difference between intent and what a company executive will commit to. It’s one thing to say they’ll invest in video and social media, however they have not been proven to directly affect the bottom line return that text advertising and SEO generate. After experiments with video and social media, and original content, it is my bet that more effort will go straight into SEO services. The ROI from SEO is proven and lasting whereas one time new media exposure has to be continually pushed to end users. Yes, this sounds self serving but in working with agencies and corporate marketing departments, I have seen the cost and ROI on some of the search engine marketing alternatives and those same funds could have produced a bonanza via SEO.

If you’re deciding on how to spend your marketing budget, take a good look at the ROI on these alternatives over years. SEO isn’t free, in fact it is very competitive and rightfully so given the revenue it can produce. If you need some help in building a business case for SEO, give me a call at 416-605-7026.