We've been using Twitter now for about two months, having left it for that period on purpose to see how it went. In fact we 'ignored' Twitter for about 18 months in all, and during that time have listened with great interest to both sides of the 'Is Twitter worth the time?' debate.
Over the months, there have been some ardent proponents and also a fair amount of doubters, some the latter having many many years of experience in the field of marketing.
But, as you are no doubt aware, the business community is as 'Twitter Mad' as the general public, all the courses being offered quickly filling up, sometimes in a matter of hours...
It was with the latter in mind that we got ourselves 'down and dirty' in Twitter and have been successful todate in creating a large number of followers (some 4,300 in 9 weeks). However, as any Twitter Expert will tell you, it is not the number of followers that counts, but who they are and what you are 'talking about' with them.
With this in mind I attended a course myself yesterday and was pleased to learn a few things (I was also pleased that I knew a lot already - plus some things that were not mentioned and are a part of an intended 'advanced course' - AND I was also pleased that the presenter learnt a few things from me on SEO - Which proves the adage 'You Never Stop Learning till You Stop Breathing').
But what in essence did I learn? Too much for one Post I can tell you, so there will be more over the next days, but for the first batch, well here goes:-
1. Choose Your Twitter Name with Care
2. Decide what you want to achieve
3. Find those people in your target market and start a conversation with them
4. Be sure to listen and don't sell sell sell
5. Don't expect instant success
The other thing that is worth mentioning is that, from my experience so far and from what I learned yesterday, if you want to run a Twitter account 'properly' you will have to give it quite a lot of time, perhaps as much as 1 - 2 hrs a day..
More tomorrow - with help and tips on making Twitter work for your business
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Opposites Attract in SEO As Well.
It's an old saying that 'opposites attract' in human relationships, but in a way you can use this in Search Engine Optimisation as well. This is of course all about 'keywords; and 'keyword phrases' and getting rankings for these on the Engines (for your site). Your list of target keywords will have (hopefully) been drawn up after many hours of diligent research (with some inspiration thrown in for good measure), but what if you are missing a trick....?
The plain fact is that when considering the list of keywords to focus your SEO efforts on you will have discarded many because they don't fit in with your site. This being done even though they might have a high frequency of use or a low number of competitor pages, either of which would make them a good choice. If only they fitted in with your products or service...
But wait on, maybe these words are the total opposite of what you sell or do, but does this preclude their use? Maybe not, for, with a bit of thought your could target these juicy looking words. Let's look at some' examples:-
Let's assume that your site sells 'quality bedroom furniture', this would of course normally mean that you would disregard phrases like 'cheap bedroom furniture' as the people using this term are probably not going to be interested in your products. Now while this is more than likely true, there will be some that you may tempt and besides the visit might cause them to mention you to a friend etc, so it would not be wasted.
But how do you 'legally' and 'legitimately' get Google to rank you and also make it worth the while of the visitor, all these being important as you must not mislead either the Engines or the visitor.
The answer is in the use of 'buyer beware' or 'have you though of this angle' pages. The former is best used when trying to get someone to pay a higher price because the cheaper product might really not be good enough, e.g for car insurance, maybe that cheap company never paying out when it counts, whilst the 'angle' pages could be used in the bedroom furniture site. Here you would be able to argue that cheap furniture won't last as long, is bad for your back (for beds) etc.
Now, because you can weave in these words into a page on the site (and legitimately too) you will be able to target these words, and you never know could convert the visitor to your way of thinking and get an order.
So, even in the area of Internet Marketing 'opposites do, or at least may, attract'.
More tomorrow
The plain fact is that when considering the list of keywords to focus your SEO efforts on you will have discarded many because they don't fit in with your site. This being done even though they might have a high frequency of use or a low number of competitor pages, either of which would make them a good choice. If only they fitted in with your products or service...
But wait on, maybe these words are the total opposite of what you sell or do, but does this preclude their use? Maybe not, for, with a bit of thought your could target these juicy looking words. Let's look at some' examples:-
Let's assume that your site sells 'quality bedroom furniture', this would of course normally mean that you would disregard phrases like 'cheap bedroom furniture' as the people using this term are probably not going to be interested in your products. Now while this is more than likely true, there will be some that you may tempt and besides the visit might cause them to mention you to a friend etc, so it would not be wasted.
But how do you 'legally' and 'legitimately' get Google to rank you and also make it worth the while of the visitor, all these being important as you must not mislead either the Engines or the visitor.
The answer is in the use of 'buyer beware' or 'have you though of this angle' pages. The former is best used when trying to get someone to pay a higher price because the cheaper product might really not be good enough, e.g for car insurance, maybe that cheap company never paying out when it counts, whilst the 'angle' pages could be used in the bedroom furniture site. Here you would be able to argue that cheap furniture won't last as long, is bad for your back (for beds) etc.
Now, because you can weave in these words into a page on the site (and legitimately too) you will be able to target these words, and you never know could convert the visitor to your way of thinking and get an order.
So, even in the area of Internet Marketing 'opposites do, or at least may, attract'.
More tomorrow
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Search Engine Optimisation is Just Like Predicting the Weather
Working out how to optimise a web page is quite a lot like predicting the weather when you get down to it. Both the weatherman and the SEO professional have a huge number of variables to deal with, and both don’t know for certain what is going to happen in the next days and hours.
Just like the weather forecaster, the SEO professional can tell, with some degree of accuracy what a particular page of words will achieve, but they have to take into account a whole lot more information besides the words on the page (e.g. about the links to the page) and then make their guess based on their knowledge of the ‘rules’ that are used by the Engines to rank pages.
The weather forecaster does a similar thing when you think about it, their data being things like air pressure and temperature. They too make their predictions based on rules, but in their case they are perhaps the luckier, as the rules they deal with are the rules of physics and they don’t change, unlike those in the SEO world, where changes to the rules can be made at whim by the masters in Google.
This means that any predictions about rankings you get must in essence, like a 5 day weather forecast be very much a guess, and that in turn means anyone who is guaranteeing a first page position cannot in truth be giving you the full facts.
Worst still for the Search Engine Optimiser, is the fact that the rules may and do change all the time and that for some keywords different rules apply than for others. Sites too can have different ‘handicaps’ applied for different ‘keyword zones’ (keywords about a particular subject area), Google preferring to display certain types of sites in some cases.
These SEO rule changes can also be switched on and off, which makes testing to see what is the best way of getting a ranking difficult to say the least, as you don’t know for certain, if it is the changes you have made to a site that causes any alterations to the rankings, or whether in fact it is a change in the underlying rules that are the culprit.
So, the Search Engine optimisation expert and the weather forecaster are both ‘up against it’ in one form or another, but in the case of the weatherman, they do at least have the benefit for knowing the rules and knowing that they won’t be being changing overnight.
Just like the weather forecaster, the SEO professional can tell, with some degree of accuracy what a particular page of words will achieve, but they have to take into account a whole lot more information besides the words on the page (e.g. about the links to the page) and then make their guess based on their knowledge of the ‘rules’ that are used by the Engines to rank pages.
The weather forecaster does a similar thing when you think about it, their data being things like air pressure and temperature. They too make their predictions based on rules, but in their case they are perhaps the luckier, as the rules they deal with are the rules of physics and they don’t change, unlike those in the SEO world, where changes to the rules can be made at whim by the masters in Google.
This means that any predictions about rankings you get must in essence, like a 5 day weather forecast be very much a guess, and that in turn means anyone who is guaranteeing a first page position cannot in truth be giving you the full facts.
Worst still for the Search Engine Optimiser, is the fact that the rules may and do change all the time and that for some keywords different rules apply than for others. Sites too can have different ‘handicaps’ applied for different ‘keyword zones’ (keywords about a particular subject area), Google preferring to display certain types of sites in some cases.
These SEO rule changes can also be switched on and off, which makes testing to see what is the best way of getting a ranking difficult to say the least, as you don’t know for certain, if it is the changes you have made to a site that causes any alterations to the rankings, or whether in fact it is a change in the underlying rules that are the culprit.
So, the Search Engine optimisation expert and the weather forecaster are both ‘up against it’ in one form or another, but in the case of the weatherman, they do at least have the benefit for knowing the rules and knowing that they won’t be being changing overnight.
Monday, 25 January 2010
Building a site with Search Engine Optimisation in Mind.
SEO is made up of two parts, ‘On Page’ optimisation, which is all about the words on the site’s pages, and ‘Off Page’ optimisation, which is all about the links from other sites, these days this including links and ‘mentions’ in the Social Media arena.
On Page SEO
Maximising ‘On page search engine optimisation’ means using the Right Words in the Right Place in the Right Way.
On Page SEO
Maximising ‘On page search engine optimisation’ means using the Right Words in the Right Place in the Right Way.
- The Right Words, are obtained through deep keyword research and by applying a fair amount of thought to the problem. Overall this is probably about 80% research and 20% educated guess work.
- The Right Place on a websites pages refers to placing the words in the areas that the Search Engines look.
The most important place is the Meta Title (this is the area in the Header area of a webpage which is seen in the browser, in that top blue bar). This area ‘tells’ the Engines what the page is supposed to be about. In general you can assume that they will look at about the first 9 words, ignoring the rest. These words need to be chosen with care and the same ones should NOT be used throughout the site.
It should also be born in mind that these words will be used in the Search Engine Listings, so even thought they don’t have to be ‘English’ in the sense of making sense, make sure that it does not look like ‘nonsense’ as this may put people off visiting the site.
The other area that counts is of course the words on the page. Here it is the way the words are used that counts (see below). However, remember that you can use the space ‘below the fold’ to place words as well. This practise will allow you to have a short / concise looking page for the causal visitor, while having more detailed information for those needing more info, as well of course of providing the Search Engine Spiders with those all needed words.
Remember too that the file names used are important too and can assist in your rankings. So use keyword rich page URL’s, extending this to the file names used for images (‘horse riding in France.jpg’ being so much more powerful than ‘img001.jpg’ in the battle for rankings in Google’s Image Search, which in turn will help with gaining rankings in the Search Engine’s listings). - The Right Way to use these words on the page centres two issues. The first being that they words you are trying to target will normally be 2 to 4 words long. It is therefore important to try to use these phrases in the copy (the words on the page) in the same order. Don’t worry if you cannot use them the same way more than a couple of times on a page (be sure to check out the article on ‘writing for the search engines’). Where it is difficult, use parts of the phrase, as well as words that mean the same thing (e.g. equine for horse) as the Engines are very good at understanding that they are about the same thing.
The second refers to the use of the ‘old fashioned’ HTML tags like H1, H2, Li and Strong. These days most designers use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), these being used by the Browser to work out how to render (display) the words on the page, e.g. a certain ‘style’ will tell the Browser to make the words look 12 pixels high in Red.
There is no standard in CSS however, you can construct any style you like and call it what you want, thus the Engines cannot tell what is important and what it not, this being critical when the site owner is trying to convince the Engines that his page really is about ‘horse riding holidays’ or whatever.
So, if you want to add weight to ‘argument’ that your page is about horse riding holidays, you need to place these keywords in a Header tag (H1) and then support this with other lesser Header tags (they range from H2 to H6) as well as using the List item tag (Li) and the Bold and Strong tags (b) and (strong). Placing words in these tags will inform the Engines that these are the important words on the page and will therefore assist you in gaining rankings for these targeted keywords.
Also remember that these keywords should be used in the ALT tags of images and more importantly in the Anchor text in links on the page. This anchor text refers to the words (normally) underlined in blue (the bit you click on). This is used in two critical ways, it first tells the Engines what the page it is going to is all about (this being true whether it is an internal or external link) and secondly and as importantly, it implies that the page the link is ON is also relevant to that anchor text, a very useful way of gaining extra points in the ranking game indeed.The fact that the Engines ignore most punctuation should also be considered (see the SEO article and other associated articles) as this can help when trying to bring together a series of words to make a target keyphrase.eyword Density is also a factor that needs to be considered, try to aim for between 2% and 4% (for Google). You can get away with more than this, but much more can de dangerous and can actually cause you to loose rankings.
Here it is important to think globally about the pages on your site, don’t overdo anything, i.e don’t use dozens of words in the ALT tags and keep your file names sensible too.
Try too hard and the Engines will smell a furry rodent (rat) and penalise you, so just be sensible and use 'Off Page' Optimisation as well and you will get better rankings.
More tomorrow
Friday, 22 January 2010
Page Layouts That Increase Search Engine Rankings
If you have a website and are struggling to get rankings on the Engines, you will no doubt have heard the cry 'get more keywords and text on your pages then!' Whilst this sounds easy, for some sites, getting those 'extra' words on the pages can be hard, or is it?
Sure, you have a lovely site, it has some great images on it and enough text to entertain and inform the visitor about your products and services. However, when it comes to getting rankings (and therefore getting those much needed visitors in the first place) there is just not enough text.
Of course many website owners will then say "But I don't want to destroy my nice looking pages / site for the sake of getting rankings! After all, if I do that, the page may look so terrible that people leave it straight away. Thus it won't make any difference that I'm getting in more traffic!"
All this is true, you can have a very good site SEO wise, that is simply awful in getting people to stay on the site and to 'convert' in the manner that is needed. The trick is of course to lay the page out in a way that will achieve both...
This is simpler than it sounds. All you have to do is to:-
The spiders don't care too much where the words are, so as long as they see them somewhere, they will be happy (and so will you, as your pages then stand a far better chance of getting a ranking). And as for your visitor, well that extra information could well make all the difference and it could just make them convert.
All this achieved and you still have a site that looks great!
More next week
Sure, you have a lovely site, it has some great images on it and enough text to entertain and inform the visitor about your products and services. However, when it comes to getting rankings (and therefore getting those much needed visitors in the first place) there is just not enough text.
Of course many website owners will then say "But I don't want to destroy my nice looking pages / site for the sake of getting rankings! After all, if I do that, the page may look so terrible that people leave it straight away. Thus it won't make any difference that I'm getting in more traffic!"
All this is true, you can have a very good site SEO wise, that is simply awful in getting people to stay on the site and to 'convert' in the manner that is needed. The trick is of course to lay the page out in a way that will achieve both...
This is simpler than it sounds. All you have to do is to:-
- Use the Meta TITLE of the page to 'say' what the page is about (9 words or so)
- Repeat the use of these words in some Header (H1 - H3) tags on the page, as near to the top as you can.
- Make sure you use relevant words in the text around these Header tags
Then and this is the trick:- - Use the words 'More Information' as a link on the bottom of the page to jump the user to a section at the bottom of the page (this can be 'legally' hidden using javascript if you want) which contains much more information. This information containing those all important keywords (and those like them - remember the Engines are very good at knowing what words are associated).
The spiders don't care too much where the words are, so as long as they see them somewhere, they will be happy (and so will you, as your pages then stand a far better chance of getting a ranking). And as for your visitor, well that extra information could well make all the difference and it could just make them convert.
All this achieved and you still have a site that looks great!
More next week
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
The 10 Rules of Internet Marketing
- Rule 1 - Decide what your goals are and maintain focus on reaching them.
- Rule 2 - When writing a newsletter and adding pages to your site, find out what people want to see in it!
- Rule 3 - Test Change and Test Again. The only way to find the perfect recipe for a cake is to bake lots of cakes...
- Rule 4 - Try to make your Marketing Interactive.
- Rule 5 - Create and Nuture relationships with customers, suppliers, business partners and other relevant associated ventures.
- Rule 6 - Never forget that SEO is not just about the words on the page, it is also about LINKS.
- Rule 7 - Integrate your Online Marketing with your Offline Marketing and make sure that they give the same message.
- Rule 8 - Keep It Simple ! Don't use Flash etc just because you can.
- Rule 9 - Content is King. Make it useful relevant and easy to find.
- Rule 10 - Do not expect Instant Success. It will take many months to perfect your internet marketing, be it SEO, PPC or the important matter of ensuring a high enough conversion rate.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
The 7 Keys to a Successful PPC Program
I'm leaving my series on writing copy for the Search Engines today (well you can have too much of a good thing) and instead today will provide some useful information on Pay Per Click (PPC), this being an area that, whilst it can result in sales, can also result in a lot of wasted money.
The Framework of Success
More Tomorrow
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The Framework of Success
- Define The Goals for the Campaign
With every part of a marketing campaign, the goals, the 'what you want to achieve' must be laid down first, you must as they say 'start with the end in mind'. These goals can be easy to set, e.g 'cost of clicks must be 10% lower than the profit from sales' or that 'a lead is required for every £20 spent on clicks'. Others could include newsletter signups, increased number of followers on a Twitter account. The list is long and will depend on what you are trying to achieve and what sort of site you have. - Conduct Keyword Research
Good keyword research is essential before starting any online campaign, whether it be PPC or SEO. There are various tools on the marketplace which will allow you to see what terms are being used in any vertical market place (subject area) and also which ones your competitors are using in their PPC campaigns. You can also see what terms sites are being linked to with, as this too gives an indication of what they want visitors to find them under.
Beware of just using the Google Suggestion Engine, as some say that this gives you keywords that Google want you to use and not perhaps those that are best. - Prepare The Campaign
The way in which a PPC campaign and the associated landing pages are put together has a profound impact on it's future performance. A badly constructed campaign costs more to run, is less effective and is also harder to manage.
The way a campaign is built will depend on many things, are there different geographical and times of days that need to be targeted? If so, it will be necessary to set up each one of these as a stand alone group of words.
When the campaigns are set you then need to divide the words into sub groups, listing all those that are 'common to each other' together. This needs to be done until the groups truly seem to be just on one subject. This makes it easier to write adverts that will match the words and also makes the whole campaign easier to manage, all 'dog keywords' are together and and 'cat keywords' are together, rather than having them all under 'Pet'.
You will also have to decide if you are going to use Broad, Exact or Phrase matching, as this will have a great impact on whether you advert is triggered and what is triggered by.
Beware using the Broad Match term without carefully constructing a list of 'negative keywords' (those words, that if used, will cause you advert NOT to be triggered) as otherwise you may find that you wasting clicks on the wrong market place entirely.
The other important thing is that the words used in the adverts will match their associated keywords and that increases 'Quality Score' and thus reduces click costs.
Take note here that the Landing pages (where the visitor goes when they click an ad) is also taken into account of scoring purposes and more importantly, this page should be built in a way that will increase conversions. - Set Your Bidding Strategy
With PPC you have to set up daily budgets and also what you are willing to pay for a click. The former sets how many times your adverts will be seen, whilst the latter sets where in the lists of adverts it will appear. The best place for an advert can only be found through long and hard trial and error (you need a lot of data here), but overall I can recommend going for positions 3 -4, this being a good balance between the top zone that can cost a lot more per click, and the bottom of the page that might just not get your ad noticed enough. - Manage Your Bids
Whatever position you decide upon, you will have to manage your bids, increasing the amount you are willing to pay per click when they drop to low and decreasing it when they climb too high. Beware here of the average position data, as it may be that your advert, while having an average of 3 is actually being seen in position 8 during the peak hours of the day (for your keyword/product), this being because the canny advertisers increase the amount they are willing to pay in these hours, thus forcing others down the list. - Analyse the Results
Today those running PPC campaigns have access to a wealth of information, not only through the ever extending list of reports available from the PPC interface, but also from the likes of Google Analytics.
These tools should be used to monitor the efficiency of all the keywords and their associated landing pages and will provide information as to the actual keywords used to activate the advert, how many pages were viewed and how many conversions were made. - Change and Test Again
Once you have all the information that Analytics can give you, you can change the keyword lists (removing some and promoting others to hero status), change the advert text and also alter the landing pages that are not working as well as they should.
The effect of these changes then needs to be examined and the whole process starts again.
More Tomorrow
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Monday, 18 January 2010
Writing Copy to Convince Google to Rank Your Site
This blog is one of a series, each one giving you some ideas as to how to write copy if you want Google to rank your pages.
Each one covers a different topic, but in essence they are all about the same thing, making sure that your page includes the 'key phrases' you want your site to be found for. It really is as simple as that, include the words in the right way (and make sure you have enough links) and your site will be ranked (although of course in cases of incredible competition, it might not be ranked as high as you would like - more on another time).
The subject of today's blog is how you can add copy to a site that is mostly images, or at least where images are as important as the words. This scenario is very common on E-commerce sites, these having pictures of the goods, and sometimes just pictures.
As the Search Engine's spiders cannot read images they only have the ALT tag (Alternate Text Tag - used in the old days when the internet was so slow that people switched off images, the ALT tag then telling them the image was 'A picture of a dog') and the file name of the image,which is often something like image05.jpg, which of course tells them nothing - see our forthcoming blog on getting listed for Google's Image search.
So with many image laden sites, the Engines have little to go on and thus don't know what to list the site for. The trick is to add text of course, but how, when images are the real message?
There are three main tricks here:-
Each one covers a different topic, but in essence they are all about the same thing, making sure that your page includes the 'key phrases' you want your site to be found for. It really is as simple as that, include the words in the right way (and make sure you have enough links) and your site will be ranked (although of course in cases of incredible competition, it might not be ranked as high as you would like - more on another time).
The subject of today's blog is how you can add copy to a site that is mostly images, or at least where images are as important as the words. This scenario is very common on E-commerce sites, these having pictures of the goods, and sometimes just pictures.
As the Search Engine's spiders cannot read images they only have the ALT tag (Alternate Text Tag - used in the old days when the internet was so slow that people switched off images, the ALT tag then telling them the image was 'A picture of a dog') and the file name of the image,which is often something like image05.jpg, which of course tells them nothing - see our forthcoming blog on getting listed for Google's Image search.
So with many image laden sites, the Engines have little to go on and thus don't know what to list the site for. The trick is to add text of course, but how, when images are the real message?
There are three main tricks here:-
- Make sure you add some words to the top of the visible page and if possible use the H1 / H2 tags to 'tell' the engines what the page contains.
- Try to add some text to describe each image, and make sure that the link to it's page (presuming it has a page of it's own) is keyword rich. Use Header tags (H3 perhaps) here if you can (but don't overload the page, instead use Bold/Strong in the description somewhere.
- Add text below the fold (this refers to the fact that in most cases, only the top half of a page will be shown on a user's browser until they scroll down) as this will not be seen at first by the user, but will always be picked up by the engines. This area can be as long as you want and thus all those keywords that you want to be found for can be included here. Just remember that you should never 'shout' too many words at the engines as this ends up sounding like 'rhubarb' !
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
What is Going to Happen to Search Engine Marketing in 2010?
I'm going to leave my series of posts on 'How to convince Google to list your site' for today to comment on the issue of how SEO and SEM is going to change in 2010. There is a lot of talk about it now on the web and it has been mentioned to me quite a few times by associates as well.
Time to put my views on the matter down for all to see.
First, let us define what we are talking about.
All the chat seems to be concentrating on Search Engine Optimisation (words on the page & links) and not about Search Engine Marketing. This in turn means that people don't think that things are going to change in the area of Pay Per Click, which is a huge weapon in the arsenal of any Internet Marketing company.
Why do I mention this, because PPC also needs the words on the pages to be carefully considered, that is if you want to get the highest quality score (and thus pay less per click). This means that whatever happens to SEO, site owners will still have to build their pages with SEO in mind, if they are using PPC.
Getting back to the point, the issue is 'will the words on the pages and the links to these pages need to be optimised in the future' and secondly why is the question being raised at all?
Let's deal with the second point first. As you guessed Google is at the bottom of this, as it is said that they soon won't bother to look at the words on a site, instead they will see what people are talking about on the Social Networks and then 'decide' what site best fits a search term from that information alone, this no doubt based on the words used in the Tweets etc and the association with a site, or the mentioning of a site/domain name.
There is even talk of Google 'knowing where you are' when searching on a mobile phone, and then using this info to provide what 'they think' is the best site in their search results. This is not that new really it just being an extension of the way that Google uses a searcher's IP address to locate where they are, then skewing the results to fit with that location to some degree, but to me it is all I must admit getting a bit scary.
Leaving the 'big brother' aspect aside (the worrying bit about Google 'deciding' what you want to see) let us look at the mechanics of this potential search algorithm.
What is being proposed is that the Engines will ignore the words on the page and instead use the Social Networks to deicide what is best. I think this is rubbish, sure Google can decide whether Coke or Pepsi are most popular and that Niki must be at the top of every search for 'trainers' because they are mentioned all the time, but what for the normal small business that is using Google to obtain traffic?
It will be along time before most of these get enough traffic on the Social Networks to 'count' and that means that Google will have to fall back upon something else to decide what to list when searching for something like 'boat trailers' and that something is BOUND to include the words on the page and the number and type of links to a site from others.
So, my view is that SEO and SEM are far from dead, BUT that anyone who wants to get (or to keep) a top ranking on Google will have to include the use of the Social Networks in their marketing plan, as these WILL be used to one degree or another when Google decides what sites to list.
Any comments gratefully received
Time to put my views on the matter down for all to see.
First, let us define what we are talking about.
All the chat seems to be concentrating on Search Engine Optimisation (words on the page & links) and not about Search Engine Marketing. This in turn means that people don't think that things are going to change in the area of Pay Per Click, which is a huge weapon in the arsenal of any Internet Marketing company.
Why do I mention this, because PPC also needs the words on the pages to be carefully considered, that is if you want to get the highest quality score (and thus pay less per click). This means that whatever happens to SEO, site owners will still have to build their pages with SEO in mind, if they are using PPC.
Getting back to the point, the issue is 'will the words on the pages and the links to these pages need to be optimised in the future' and secondly why is the question being raised at all?
Let's deal with the second point first. As you guessed Google is at the bottom of this, as it is said that they soon won't bother to look at the words on a site, instead they will see what people are talking about on the Social Networks and then 'decide' what site best fits a search term from that information alone, this no doubt based on the words used in the Tweets etc and the association with a site, or the mentioning of a site/domain name.
There is even talk of Google 'knowing where you are' when searching on a mobile phone, and then using this info to provide what 'they think' is the best site in their search results. This is not that new really it just being an extension of the way that Google uses a searcher's IP address to locate where they are, then skewing the results to fit with that location to some degree, but to me it is all I must admit getting a bit scary.
Leaving the 'big brother' aspect aside (the worrying bit about Google 'deciding' what you want to see) let us look at the mechanics of this potential search algorithm.
What is being proposed is that the Engines will ignore the words on the page and instead use the Social Networks to deicide what is best. I think this is rubbish, sure Google can decide whether Coke or Pepsi are most popular and that Niki must be at the top of every search for 'trainers' because they are mentioned all the time, but what for the normal small business that is using Google to obtain traffic?
It will be along time before most of these get enough traffic on the Social Networks to 'count' and that means that Google will have to fall back upon something else to decide what to list when searching for something like 'boat trailers' and that something is BOUND to include the words on the page and the number and type of links to a site from others.
So, my view is that SEO and SEM are far from dead, BUT that anyone who wants to get (or to keep) a top ranking on Google will have to include the use of the Social Networks in their marketing plan, as these WILL be used to one degree or another when Google decides what sites to list.
Any comments gratefully received
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Bulleted Lists - Writing With The Search Engines In Mind
This is another in the series of items about 'writing with the search engines in mind', but what exactly are we talking about here, getting rankings of course? Rankings for your chosen keyphrase.
Now all this is very fine and dandy, but you also have to remember that you are writing with the human in mind too. Some of these tricks may look a bit clumsy from some standpoints, and in a way that is true, you would not write this way under 'normal' circumstances, but if there is no other way of moving your pages up the list (so you can get some visitors) then following the rules laid down here will help.
One word of warning however, if you see your rankings rise and get the visitors in AND then find that the pages are not liked (visitors 'bounce' off them and don't stay long) then you will need to de-tune the pages a bit, reducing the amount of 'keyword writing' in the copy, as this may well make the pages more palatable for your visitors (again down to checking on the results).
Anyway to business:-
This section is all about using 'Bulleted Lists'. These are common enough on the web today and are excellent in getting messages across, the text being easy to read and scan. However, many a trick is lost when it comes to increasing keyword density in the copy.
The problem is that most lists are written in a way that only uses the main keyphrases once or twice, failing to use them (or something like them - remember the engines are clever at associating different terms) in the actual list items themselves.
Example for keyword 'number plates':-
We can supply number plates to fit all cars in a huge variety of styles
Number plates available to fit all cars in a huge variety of styles shapes and sizes
More on writing for the engines tomorrow
Now all this is very fine and dandy, but you also have to remember that you are writing with the human in mind too. Some of these tricks may look a bit clumsy from some standpoints, and in a way that is true, you would not write this way under 'normal' circumstances, but if there is no other way of moving your pages up the list (so you can get some visitors) then following the rules laid down here will help.
One word of warning however, if you see your rankings rise and get the visitors in AND then find that the pages are not liked (visitors 'bounce' off them and don't stay long) then you will need to de-tune the pages a bit, reducing the amount of 'keyword writing' in the copy, as this may well make the pages more palatable for your visitors (again down to checking on the results).
Anyway to business:-
This section is all about using 'Bulleted Lists'. These are common enough on the web today and are excellent in getting messages across, the text being easy to read and scan. However, many a trick is lost when it comes to increasing keyword density in the copy.
The problem is that most lists are written in a way that only uses the main keyphrases once or twice, failing to use them (or something like them - remember the engines are clever at associating different terms) in the actual list items themselves.
Example for keyword 'number plates':-
We can supply number plates to fit all cars in a huge variety of styles
- no documentation required
- fixing kits available
- old fashioned black and white plates
- online plate builder
- Fast Delivery
Number plates available to fit all cars in a huge variety of styles shapes and sizes
- your number plates can be supplied without documentation
- fixing kits available for all types of car and bike number plates
- old fashioned black and white number / licence plates available
- use our online number plate builder to include all sorts of images
- your number plates delivered safely and fast too
More on writing for the engines tomorrow
Thursday, 7 January 2010
More on Writing For The Search Engines
Sometimes people use what are called 'Personal' keyphrases when they are searching on the Internet, say for something like 'help me save money'. Getting these into your copy can be really difficult as it not natural to use such words in most pages, site owners normally using the phrase 'helping you save money' as we are writing for customers.
So how can we get words like this into our pages?
Here's an example:-
******************
Looking for ways to save money
These days many people are looking to cut costs, so it is not surprising if you are typing in 'help me save money' into the Engines, after all all the tips you can get the better.
In fact, such is the demand for help in this area, that I bet there is more than one book being written under the title 'Help Me Save Money' and more than one Blog called something very much like that too.
******************
Hopefully you get the drift here and will be able to weave these 'personal' keyphrases into your pages using this simple technique.
More on convincing the Engines to List your site using Search Engine Optimisation tomorrow.
So how can we get words like this into our pages?
Here's an example:-
******************
Looking for ways to save money
These days many people are looking to cut costs, so it is not surprising if you are typing in 'help me save money' into the Engines, after all all the tips you can get the better.
In fact, such is the demand for help in this area, that I bet there is more than one book being written under the title 'Help Me Save Money' and more than one Blog called something very much like that too.
******************
Hopefully you get the drift here and will be able to weave these 'personal' keyphrases into your pages using this simple technique.
More on convincing the Engines to List your site using Search Engine Optimisation tomorrow.
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