Posts filed under 'SEO'
My attention recently got drawn to an article by Cuban Council on the American Express website ‘Youropenbook.com’, which stated the following
“Finally, don’t waste money on so-called Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) specialists. Search engines are very quick to penalize sites that try to trick their filtering techniques, and once your site has been put on Google’s blacklist, it will take forever to get off.”
What made such ‘experts’ in online come to such a conclusion I would love to know - its a bit like me pointing the finger at American Express for the US credit crunch. It seems a very significant statement to make with very little evidence to back it up, and something I would suggest should be properly researched before putting pen to paper. Whilst I would agree ‘Textbook SEO’ (As Mike Grehan has often referred to it) is a dinosaur of the past, however the role of search marketing specialist even a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) specialist/Digital Asset Optimisation (DAO - Chris Copeland) is still a fundamental aspect of your marketing mix - and something that should be embraced.
In the article, a number of points are raised in order to raise awareness of your services online - none of which in their simplest form I can disagree with
- Get a memorable domain - Great advice - but why not get one that potentially may help with your online visibility as well
- Outsource web hosting - This is where the role of a search marketeer could help you. What happens if you so happen to outsource your hosting to a shared host hosting a number of prominent link farms. Potentially this may cause a number of issues with your online visibility.
- Design for your audience - no argument here - the most fundamental part of web design imo.
However the final part advises readers to ‘Optimise for your search engines’ - Yes Optimise for your search engines - just don’t use search engine optimisation specialists according to Cuban Council. No offence but this is like saying - invest your money but don’t use a broker. Chances are it may work - but its far more likely to be a successful project if you get someone that knows what they are doing - just make sure you are getting someone that does know what they are doing. These days there are so many good agencies out there - that there is no need to use a standalone web design agency many who arguably do not understand search engine optimisation nor how it works.However I would like to draw points to five points on the American Express website alone where an Online Marketing expert could have provided far more value -
- Localisation
http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2006-24%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=american+express&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGBTry running the above query - that is a search for American Express on a UK only search. Feasibily I would say this is something a potential customer may do - i.e. I don’t want contact details for your Singapore office, I want a UK contact. Because of the current setup of the American Express website the site does not show - as it does for a global search.A well structured global search engine optimisation strategy would have picked this issue up, and implemented a localised search campaign aimed at correctly targeting applicable demographics.
- Basic Optimisation - A simple browse of the UK subdirectory shows the ‘lack of SEO on the current site’. Whilst to a certain degree brand would go a long way here - the fact is - finer segmentation and optimisation of data makes it more difficult to a potential customer like me to convert meaning that I have to undertake a four to five clickstream to get to the top level of information I require - something I would suggest could be significantly reduced by a more targeted optimisation technique.
- Use of Subdomains - Whilst I understand technically why subdomains may have been used - this has resulted in considerable segmentation in their display in the Search engine results pages. Take a look at the example we provide above and you will notice results for https://home.amer…, http://www.american… and http://www3.america . These results have been treated as seperate domains and thus diluted much of the effects a more unified site may have provided. Not just optimisation related but from an administration perspective it must be a nightmare.
- Visibility - Away from core brand terms American Express does not appear for many high traffic relevant terms such as ‘credit card’. With research suggesting users are becoming more search savvy, and therefore conducting more searches and browsing less SERPs. This means that making your website more visibile whether in terms of search engine positioning, or actual visibility in its original guise - making it stand out is more crucial now than ever. Mining the long tail here could throw up some golden nuggets.
- Competitors - Lets face it all the competitors are doing it
Now I know American Express did not directly write this article, however as the huge brand they are they wield a massive amount of influence, and such comments are a little irresponsible in my opinion. Whilst as others in the industry have said previously, SEO in its 1990’s guise is dead - however there exists an important service offered by online marketing specialists that enhances the design and development of sites , both from a technical and marketing perspective
February 24th, 2008
A post on the Marketing Pilgrim website quoted a recent patent application by Google outlining a ‘method of optical character recognition in digital images.’, covering both static imagery as well as video.
Should this patent come to fruition it would highlight a significant step forward in indexation and thus potentially what you see in terms of SERPs, and ultimetely how the Online Marketing sector interact with both video and imagery, particularly given the increase in popularity for aspects of online marketing such as social media and the like, particularly given the apparent lack of technical advancement in terms of search within this area.
Still, I would suggest such advancements are stilll a while off and any introductions of the patent are likely to only come into mainstream play in the medium to long term. Still - watch this space….
January 7th, 2008
I have disagreed with Andrew Girdwood from BigMouthMedia a couple of times in the past, however I wholeheartedly applauded him on his article on ‘Think of the human. Write for humans!‘, an article tackling the topic of keyword density, and in particular a response to comments by David Cushman and Sean Warwick.
There are a number of pages around that do occupy some reasonable positions for moderately competitive term (studentcomputers is one such term that springs to mind), however for everyone of these keyword laden SEO-targeted pages, there are a number of other well structured and well thought out campaigns that comensate for this (I used the Monarch SEO campaign as well as a couple of our own - Escapes2 for example). However as Andrew states:
“Proper SEO (okay; let’s use the word ‘ethical SEO’) is about ensuring the search engine can see what your site is about. In fact, proper SEO includes basic tips like ensure web page content has an unique URL so communities and forums can link to it (as opposed to an Ajax style or single Flash URL which is used to display all the content). It tends to be the horrid combination of search spam and poor websites which result in Google searchers clicking themselves into a worthless experience.”
However it is Andrews response to Sean Warwicks comments regarding high keyword density pages that I think are absolutely spot on, and I can only aplaud his response
“And lastly, let me respectfully (and pleadingly) reiterate one key point: The fact that you *can* find sites that rank well for a particular keyword engaging in “keyword stuffing” is NOT evidence that such keyword stuffing is an effective SEO tool. I can also show you many sites that use the letter “Q” exactly three times that also rank well. And no, this is not an indication of a secret “jump the ‘q’ rule.”
SEO has come a long long way in 2007, moving from ‘Black Art’ to mainstream marketing with organisations such as Bigmouth, Latitude and JustSearch catapulting SEO into the mainstream. We still have a way to go, however it is the education of people such as David and Sean that will continue to see Online Marketing and Search marketing in particular continue to develop in the long term
December 16th, 2007
One of my colleagues Will Graham sent me this link the other day which almost made me fall of my seat. The site itself sits within the oft shady lottery world, however the extent to which the site has been ‘optimised’ was wonderful… Cloaking, hidden text, the list goes on …. and on.
Now to potential clients of E-Gain (and fellow SEO colleagues), this is not the way we do SEO, however this is probably one of the best black hat SEO sites I have seen for a while.
To see the site in reference - go to www.lottofast.com. SPAMTASTIC !!!
November 13th, 2007
Search Marketing is changing, and changing quickly. Terms such as personalised search, local search optimisation or social media optimisation are not just ‘this is going to be the next big thing’ type terms, they are the now, and they should be part of your online marketing toolkit.
Clients are spending more on online marketing than ever before with a recent Internet advertising report quoting that spend on digital marketing had surpassed the £2bn mark, with spend in many online marketing sectors more than that for direct marketing. I would however suggest that clients in many instances (particularly those with less budget), still perceive more value in offline marketing. So how can we change this?
More focus on ROI
There are still a number of agencies out there that determine the success of the campaigns by the amount of number 1 rankings they have, with regular ranking reports the norm. There has been a shift across many digital marketing agencies recently towards a more ROI focussed success measurement where the number of leads, sales and enquiries as a direct result of activity being used as a benchmark rather than the number of terms.
Whilst we personally monitor visibility in the SERPS, we do not use it a criteria for success. Sure, good ranking in many cases is indicative of a good potential ROI, in my opinion as a online marketing specialist, our role is more about successful marketing. There are also other issues in using visibility on terms as criteria for success including:
- Results are not constant across data centres - therefore not a thorough representation of where you are currently ranked
- Rankings are not indicative of success - I may be number one for ’seo wizard helmshore’, however with Helmshore being a small town in Lancashire, I would suggest I am very unlikely to get enough traffic off to make a living. Admittedly that is a very bad example, however it is indicative that a badly researched and implemented campaign, can produce impressive results in the number of no.1 terms, however it is unlikely to produce any significant difference to the clients bottom line - and as such - why is he going to bother doing SEO again.
- Here today, gone tomorrow - Rankings are not constant. Google, MSN and Yahoo change their algorithms constantly and as such results bounce around for weeks on end. Other improvements in the index have seen new content finding its way into the index far quicker these days, and therefore included in results.
Web Analytics therefore should have an even more important part to play, not just in terms of shaping an online marketing strategy, but also in terms of measuring success. Comprehensive filtering and goal setting should be the norm, giving both you and your client scope for successful measurement of your campaign
Change the perception of SEO as a black art - ongoing
The perception of SEO as a black art is slowly dying, however I would suggest there are still two many people having bad experiences with search marketing. On FusedNations blog this morning, MarketingGuy blogged about ‘Is SEO in the UK in a mess‘. Personally on the whole, I would have to say no. There are a number of SEO agencies such as Search Latitude, BigMouthMedia, Greenlight, Spannerworks, The Search Works and Steak Media for example that have really increased the profile of search marketing particularly to larger clients, however I would suggest there is still a subset within the industry that will always be responsible for affecting perception through badly advised or implemented campaigns.
Unfortunately I would suggest much of the problem lies in perception yet. There are a number of people who are still working to the submission/meta tags approach. I can count the first agency I worked at in 2001 as just such an example, despite a well packaged online marketing section to the website. To me this is part of the problem. I have recently interviewed a number of potential candidates for an SEO role, and have to say that there seems to be a massive gap between potential candidates - those who know and understand SEO - and those that merely take orders. I would suggest that there is a lack of good SEO’s in the UK (backed up by the horrendous number of recruitment agencies I still find phoning myself up - trying to fill senior search marketing positions).
Anyhow back on topic. Many web development agencies offer SEO as part of their service - however many do not offer the professional service and approach that a search marketing specialist would offer them, and as such these experiences can then manifest themselves in the industry as a whole. I suggested in response to the afore mentioned Fused Nation post the following:
TBH its about time, we started looking at giving the industry a more professional front. All the “let people look at what we have done” is great - but when all the ’snake oilers’ are doing it to (albeit on terms like ’skiing holidays sahara’ or some other low volume, nonsense term) it can be difficult to sort the wheat from the chaf, particularly when I personally am of the opinion that the true value of a well structured Online marketing campaign is still very undervalued commercially (ie we know it can help us - but we understand offline).Personally as a collective, it is about time, we signed up to some central guidelines/charter (not paid membership affiliated - at the end of the day its like you say - its can often a smaller agency that does the reputation damage - not the big IAB/Sempo affiliated agency - though I would suggest some of your four examples may fit into that).”
As a footnote for part 1, we as an SEO community have come along way, however there seems little point in resting on our laurels. We have a good solid core to build on, and one in which to make a respected and successful sector
September 19th, 2007
It appears that the Yahoo keyword suggestion tool is no more - whether this is long term or short term case is still open to debate. Data updates for the US were stopped in January 2007, and the UK data followed in May 2007. However as of late last week (week ending 16th September 2007), the keyword tool stopped returning results, leaviing many small and medium search marketing specialists short of a statistical basis for keyword research. So are there any other solutions…
Google external keyword tool
URL: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Thoughts:
Quite useful in terms of working out popularity of terms, however is a little lacking when it comes to predicting traffic volumes.
WordTracker
URL: http://www.wordtracker.com/
Thoughts:
For a UK SEO I would suggest using WordTracker only with the UK data. However it should be noted this is a payable option with pricing as follows:
- £15 per week
- £29 per month
- £149 per year
Keyword Discovery
URL: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com
Thoughts:
Very thorough, and more pricey.
Yahoo suggestion tool Mark II
URL: ?
Thoughts:
Not much we can say about this. RustyBrick from SearchEngineRoundtable has suggested there may be one on the way. Only time will tell
September 17th, 2007
It was only a matter of time before part three came along….
I would have thought by now, my thoughts on paid linkage would probably be fairly clear, if not heres a recap
Paid Links - Good or Bad - a UK SEO perspective
Paid Links - Good or Bad - a UK SEO perspective Part II
I was however reading Matt Cutts presentation to SES San Jose, regarding paid links - which I have to say was highly informative, however one slide in particular got me thinking, in particular Slide 2
Are paid links evil?
That’s the wrong question.
The right question: Do paid links that pass PageRank violate search engines quality guidelines?
The answer to that question is yes.
This has lead me to evaluate Googles quality guidelines in order to evaluate just which aspects Matt Cutts refers to. The quality guidelines are taken from here, and we will refer in particular to the quality guidelines only
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
The analysis
Guideline 1: Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
I would suggest this would not apply to the issue of paid links. The development of pages for increased visibility in the search engines would not apply in this instance
Guideline 2: Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
Now this may be the guideline in question. My feelings on this have been previously outlined in the posts above - I as the competitor do not have a problem with competitors buying links (if they wish to buy links on the basis that Google may change the algorithm -as they have - let them - i will have to find more creative ways - and anyway - if buying links for SEO purposes only is bad - why isn’t getting links by any other means for SEO purposes only bad ie directories). Surely this needs further explanation.
Secondly where do you draw the line here. Using a real life example, I noticed a number of ads down the right hand side of a well known marketing/consultancy portal in the UK. The site itself fairly enough offers advertising, paid advertising to clients, and some of these clients have contextual linkage to their site included in the ads to a number of well known SEO companies based in Scotland and England. These links are neither no follow, nor is the page nofollow, nor is the link 302′d, nor is the page protected by robots.txt.
Does this therefore constitute paid linkage - and if so have these links been waited down? Looking at the performance of both sites, I don’t think so. So therefore it brings into question - just what is ok and what is not.
Finally, and this leads on from point 2. Intent. How is Google going to determine intent. Yes, there will be tell tail signs on some link patterns but using the self same portal above. I will give these seo companies the benefit of the doubt, and say that these adverts were brought purely on a brand awareness basis, and any link juice gained is purely co-incidental. However how can I be 100% sure this is the case - the point is I can’t and the same applies to many of these paid links. How can Google be 100% sure that the link has been purchased for SEO purposes only or is this to be selective - and if so this needs to be very definitively explained.
However according to Matt Cutts presentation ‘Buying paid links that pass PageRank violates our quality guidelines’. Surely that doesn’t even bring intent into it. Again the presentation goes on to say - Google is willing to take strong action against PPP links, and is an area Google is focussing on.
If this is the case - I would suggest further advise is required by Google to webmasters and SEO specialists in order to educate as to what is good and what is bad.
Guideline 3: Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
Now again this could be one of the points in question. However this is still quite a grey area, as Google are yet to say submitting to directories is bad - and lets face it - I would suggest many SEO specialists merely submit to directories for SEO purposes only. Whilst I agree with people such as Andrew Girdwood and John Andrews when they say that content development is the best way forward, there is no way of getting round the fact that people do ‘acquire’ linkage for SEO purposes only, and thus if paid is bad, surely any other form of link acquisition in order to facilitate increased visibility in the search engines is bad - and the line can not be merely drawn at just paid links.
Guideline 4: Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.
Again - would suggest this wouldn’t apply here.
Finally the specific guidelines - going to do these in one as I don’t think any apply
To conclude - maybe I along with many other search marketing professionals would be more open to the nofollow campaign if it didn’t appear to have as many gaping holes in the guidelines as it does. I personally, do not want to go against any guidelines, and thus see any clients online visibility therefore impacted, hence why any queries/objections are therefore highlighted via a medium such as this.
However I would suggest the policy of nofollow does need to be significantly further though through in order to be fully implemented (correctly) by the search marketing community as a whole.
September 3rd, 2007
Lisa Barrone from Bruce Clay followed up my previous post on whether Google hated SEO’s (from the 8th of August) which provoked the following response from none other than Matt Cutts from Google
“I also feel like if Google hated SEO, we’d know it. Google isn’t just tolerating SEOs; they’re going out of their way to help them and give them access to more information. We’ll always want more information and more data and more transparency, but if you look at what they’ve given us over the years, it’s pretty impressive.”
What you said. 
Google definitely doesn’t hate SEO. Sure, there are some bad SEOs out there that do bad things - sometimes even illegal things. See e.g. http://justinsomnia.org/2007/08/search-engine-marketeers-are-the-new-script-kiddies/
Stuff like that ends up giving SEO a black-eye with lots of people. And you only need to watch the Scoble video to see that SEO has an image problem with some non-SEO folks.
But Googlers know that there are a ton of great SEOs out there that help clients improve their sites and make the web more crawlable. And the more that we can do to help and encourage those SEOs, the better that is for the web and the search industry.
So the short answer is that Google doesn’t hate SEO or SEOs”
Which as it turns out followed on quite nicely from yesterdays post regarding changing peoples perception of SEO - and growing up into a respected profession - not an easy job - but one I would say is necessary in the long term
August 31st, 2007
A quick linkout to a very good article by Dan Thies, demystifying the SEO myths often bounded round the industry. Statistical SEO is often bounded round in various shapes and sizes including LSI SEO, however the following article explores some of the facts behind these theories.
To read more click here
August 29th, 2007
I have just read John Andrews recap of the SES session on Paid Links (hat tip to Andrew Girdwood for the initial post on this), and have to say from my earlier post, possibly one aspect I missed was the subject of content development.
Both John and Andrew (and Google from the afore mentioned session) make reference to the value of unique content, which I would suggest all SEO specialists would agree with, is one of the most important aspects of SEO. However I do have to still stop short of the ‘Paid links are bad’ argument.
Whilst I would agree, a campaign based purely on paid linkage is surely not advisable or indeed should be rewarded, I still personally don’t see the problem with paid linkage (again I would highlight the fact this is coming from someone who hasnt employed such tactics to any real effect on the past).
However, move back to my original references to the offline model.
If I were to market my product offline, I may use a PR campaign (lets compare this to Content generation) and some direct offline marketing or magazine advertorials (lets compare this to link generation whether it be paid or unpaid). Offline works with a combination of the two factors (albeit the example above being wildly oversimplified), however the point is - surely Google’s algorithm could factor in such factors as uniqueness of content, depth of content, link density, link relevancy and weight accordingly.
Paid links aren’t bad - over-reliance on paid links is bad, however my concern with the approach of such radical action is it merely serves to focus hardcore OVER-SEO activity elsewhere, like reciprical linkage before it. I personally understand what both John and Andrew say about content, however the mere fact Google have said Content is good will no doubt result in millions of pages of so-called unique content being produced thus diluting both the value and quality of content, and I would suggest we may find ourselves in a similar situation regarding content generation in the future.
I will however end this post echoing some of John’s thoughts. Whilst I personally may not agree with some of the factors of Googles recent approach to paid links, we have to live with them, and I will end with a quote from Johns post
“Is Google right in its approach to the web? Is Google just in its delivery of the carrot and the stick? Is Google fair in the way it operates? None of that matters to the search marketer/SEO. …You need to get to know Google, and listen to what Google says. You don’t need to agree” - John Andrews - johnon.com
August 28th, 2007
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