2010 was a busy year for search and particularly Google who have upped their game yet again. In this post we’ll review some of the major highlights for SEO in the last year.

New Ranking Factor Announced: Page Load Time

In April 2010 Google announced that the speed your page loads for a visitor is a factor considered in their ranking algorithm. Basically if your page loads slowly then you’ll drop down the rankings. Don’t panic though, its only likely to affect really slow loading sites but keep your eye on this factor and if you are in a very competitive market and your rankings are slipping this could be an area to improve.

The Bing-Yahoo Integration

In the USA the integration was complete and Yahoo’s independent index was retired thus giving Bing a leap in market share. Of course they are so far behind Google that they cannot be compared at all however Bing is now a competitor worthy of attention.

Google’s May Day (or Brand) Update

Google applies an extremely complex algorithm which takes into consideration hundreds and hundreds of different factors and they are constantly tweaking and improving it to ensure that the results presented are the best they can be. Sometimes there are more significant tweaks, or algorithm updates, that have a more dramatic affect. The May Day update resulted in many websites losing long tail traffic (up to 10 percent or more). The sites that suffered seemed to have a low number of deep links. The winners were “high quality” sites and big brands.

Google Caffeine

This was not an algorithm update although its often confused as one especially as it was introduced close to the May Day Update. Caffeine was an infrastructure change which related purely to speeding up the indexing system. Caffeine allowed new content to be indexed almost instantly rather than in batches which was slower.

Google Instant

In September Google Instant impacted the user experience in a very noticeable way by showing suggested search phrases as you typed your phrase into the search box. The idea being that if you saw what you wanted appearing in the list then you wouldn’t need to finish typing. It wasn’t just the suggestions popping up that was so noticeable it was the fact that all the results changed as you typed too – it could be quite distracting. Google Instant also impacted the long tail as more people gave up typing in longer phrases & went with the suggestions.

Around a year ago, Google introduced their new database architecture, Caffeine. This changeover was done for several reasons, the first of which was to allow Google to continue to index all of the web in years to come, and the second of which was revealed last week: Instant.

The main issue with Instant, from Google’s perspective, is that it generates between 7-10 times the volume of searches per second than the previous version, as Google loads search result pages constantly as people are typing. With the expected rollout of this into browser bar-based searches (like the Chrome bar, the Google toolbar etc), this will almost certainly expand steadily from only appearing to logged-in users, to being the default state for Google.

Ten Blue Links?

So, the main upshot of the changeover to the Caffeine system is that it allows for vast amounts of real-time data to be added to the index almost as fast as it’s created. But what does this mean in terms of rankings?

Well, in short, it allows fresh data to be displayed to users much more rapidly. As a result, we’ve seen greater emphasis on results featuring video, location-based services, news items, personalised results and the like over the last year. This has had the effect of changing the strategy for SEO in certain industries, as it has created new avenues for search marketers to reach their intended audiences.

Instant Coffee Anyone?

A lot has been written about Instant over the last couple of days, some of it accurate, some of it less-so. To save time, I’ve compiled some basic takeaway points as to the nature of Instant, what it brings to the table, and how it affects SEO and PPC.

• Does Google kill SEO? No, but it does change keyword research slightly, as marketers need to pay greater attention to the suggested keyword searches
• Negative keywords need to be paid closer attention to in PPC, as a search for “U2 new” will return results for “U2 new album”, where a user might type their full query as “U2 new zealand tour dates”
• PPC ad impressions will only count when:
  • the user clicks anywhere on the page after beginning to type a search query
  • the user chooses one of the predicted queries from Google Instant
  • the user stops typing and search results are shown for at least three seconds
• The nuts and bolts of how SEO is conducted on-site and in linkbuilding hasn’t changed
• The nuts and bolts of how PPC is conducted hasn’t changed either, although it is now pretty much the only good way of getting impression data for search volume numbers for keywords. Keyword tools will soon be relegated to being only useful for generating keyword ideas, not for estimating volume

The credit crunch isn’t going to dent the volume of sales made online this Christmas, in fact its more likely to bring increased sales as people search for bargains.  The season starts early on the internet so now is the time to ensure your site is ready for all those lovely visitors.

Here are some tips to get your website ready for Christmas:

• Have Special Offers on your home page – not too many to overwhelm people but enough for them to see that these are great deals.  Think of offering loss-leaders and products that will encourage sales of additional products.
• Have Featured Products on your home page – these get indexed by the search engines quickly and attract more attention from browsing visitors.
• Make your Delivery Policyvery clear – free delivery under X £££s and say how many days it will take to arrive. At this sensitive time of year make it very clear what is your last date for ordering to ensure delvery by Christmas
• Can your Images be improved? Great images sell product, its a fact!
• Make sure shoppers can easily find your Returns Policy – it will give them confidence that you have their interests at heart.
• Make your shop window Seasonal – the same way that shop windows in high streets are decorated for Christmas your website shop front can do the same to inspire that seasonal spirit.
• Customer Service is essential, especially as the big day approaches – make sure people feel they can get the support they need.  A phone number is ideal and online support is also effective for demonstrating that your website is attended.  We recommend Provide Support for this.
• It may sound obvious but do your visitors know what you sell?  I have seen many ecommerce websites that sell such an eclectic mix of products that its really not clear where they are positioned.  You have only 3-5 seconds to make a good impression and grab your customer’s attention so don’t confuse them with anything – keep it really simple.

Good luck for the coming season – CapGemini recently predicted that online sales in the UK will increase by 60% in the three months up to Christmas so this is definitely the time to be paying attention to your online marketing strategy.  Give us a call on 0845 838 0936 if you are interested in driving more traffic to your website this season – there is a very good chance we can help you quickly.

As the singularly most important thing that the vast majority of websites want to achieve it is essential that you measure your conversions from all your different sources.  If you don’t care whether your website brings you conversions then this post is not for you.

However, if you want your website to make you money… read on!

A well optimised website will bring targeted traffic not only through search but through referrals too (referrals are visits that come from links on other people’s websites).  Getting targeted traffic to your site is fantastic but then you have to convert them.

Most SEO companies stop at getting traffic to your site, in fact the vast majority of SEO companies stop at getting you rankings! Because our company is all about Strategy we look to the very end of the process and understand your business objectives and what the goals are for your website.

Think about what you are trying to achieve…

• Are you looking for completed sales?
• Sign-ups to your newsletter?
• Completed enquiry forms?
• Contact by phone or email?
• Increased and consistent traffic so you can sell advertising?

Whatever you want your website to achieve, whatever your conversion is, you should be measuring it at every stage so that you can get more of them. Do you know where your best traffic comes from? Do you know which are your money phrases?  Do you know what aspects of your site are your conversion factors? What is the route from landing page to conversion that works best? Do you know where the weak areas are on your site? How does your competitor offer a better experience than you do?

Knowing the answers to questions like these will improve your conversions so that your website makes you more money.

If you are looking to increase targeted traffic to your website so that you can increase your conversions contact us today.

To gain top listings in the search engines it helps if you understand how the search engines work with your website and how they determine which websites get to appear at the top.

Search engines uses robots (other names are spiders or crawlers) which are programs that visit websites by following links from one page to another. When a robot visits a page it will take a copy of that page and put it in the search engine’s own database (this process is known as caching a page). Once in the database the search engine will apply their algorithm to tag or index the page so that its position in the SERPs for any given search term can be determined quickly.

Website pages need to be indexed regularly in order to stand any chance of performing. Each page on a website that is indexed can be produced in the SERPs so every indexed page should be considered to be a potential landing page. You can easily block any page that you do not want to get indexed and concentrate efforts on optimising important landing pages.

The algorithms used by the search engines take into consideration many different factors (Google has about 200 factors) when they evaluate a page and decide where it should appear in their results pages. SEO considers each page on a website and applies the best fit to get the best ranking for that page amongst its competition. However, competition for different phrases is not equal and so the same thing that is successful for one page is not necessarily effective for another page.

Search engines want to provide the best and most relevant results for their users and so our efforts are concentrated on meeting the demands of the algorithms through white hat methods. With Google having up to 85% of the UK search market we tend to favour Google’s algorithm which in turn favours good quality content combined with quality, relevant inbound links. These clean strategies also feed Yahoo’s and MSN’s algorithms too.

For competitive market places it is harder to get top rankings for generic product and service related search terms because other websites have fought hard to get to the top and will defend their position against newcomers. With the right strategy, over time, top listings can be achieved but we would argue that the value is in the conversions achieved and conversions can come from a much wider source than the immediately obvious generic phrases.

Approximately 80% of searches performed every day are unique and many use 3, 4 or 5 word phrases, they are quite specific phrases and so they tend to convert well – this is commonly referred to as the “long tail” of search and its value should not be underestimated.

Our approach to optimising our client’s websites be to develop a two-pronged strategy that aims for the top competitive search engine listings and also top listings for a wide variety of long tail search phrases.  We know that the bottom line for our clients is to make more money so that is what we help them do.

If you are interested to know more about how the search engines are working with your own website you can conduct your own mini website SEO audit. Follow the simple steps and you will find the answers to the questions below, you can also so the same with your competitor sites and see what you can learn to improve your own site.

Is my site indexed by the search engines?
How many links do I have pointing to my site?
What are my Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPs)?
What do my meta tags look like?

You can do SEO on your website yourself and we encourage clients to have an understanding of how we work but doing your own optimisation is much like fixing your own roof – you can buy the tools, read a book and have a go… it will cost you time and energy and it may get the result you want, or you can leave it to the professionals and go do something else that is a better use of your own time.

When millions and millions of searches are performed each day its probably surprising to find that 85% of the search terms entered in the search engines are unique. These unique search terms are gold for ecommerce websites and good optimisation will target the broad range of unique searches as well as the shorter more popular terms. The aim of a long tail search engine optimisation strategy is to increase conversions by being in front of visitors at the point they are ready to buy.

How Consumer Search Behaviour Works

Let’s take the example of Jason who wants to buy a lawn mower and consider his search behaviour as an average online consumer. First Jason might search for “lawn mowers” to research the options that are available. “Lawn mowers” is a popular search term and it would be great to hold that number 1 position for that search term but its most likely that Jason is not ready to buy yet, he is just researching. He won’t just look at one website, he will look at at least 2 or three sites and he’s looking to gather information in order to refine his search.

His next search might be to add another word to his search such as “electric lawn mower” or “petrol lawn mower” and he may be looking for reviews at this point. More and more consumers are turning to user-generated content in the form of reviews and recommendations in order to inform their decisions. Jason’s research leads him to favour a particular brand and so his search term becomes “Qualcast electric lawn mower” so that he can consider the different models and which would best suit his needs.

The final stage of Jason’s search is when he has decided exactly which model he wants and this is the most important search because now he is ready to buy. His search term is “Qualcast Suffolk Punch electric lawn mower”, this is a long tail search because it contains more than 3 words and is not a popular search term that is used often – it is gold to the supplier who comes top of the search engines for this term at the point Jason wants to buy.

Think about your own search behaviour, isn’t this fairly typical of what you do yourself?

Steps you can take to optimise for the long tail:

As a site owner, whether you have an ecommerce website or a brochure site you can benefit from your long tail visitors. Your ecommerce sites should have every level of pages optimised including the deep product pages – ensure you have a mix of specific and generic search terms and that your titles and descriptions are unique. On-page descriptions should also be meaty and interesting with lots of relevant information and benefits and of course a competitive price.

At Strategy we research the “money phrases” for your site because this is where you will make most money. We want to get you increased traffic at every level of your site and above all increased conversions – check out our Pay-Per-Results Search Engine Optimisation Services which include usability studies to increase sales.

There are some exceptionally cool strategic tools available that can give your organisation the edge over your competition.

Imagine you have a business-to-business website…

How would you like to know exactly which organisations are visiting your site? What they searched for? Which pages they visited, Whether they have visited before etc etc.  Yes, its very much the kind of general web stats information that you can get from most free or cheap website packages but let me repeat this because its quite important…. you can see exactly which organisations visited your site!

If you were a mainframe computer software company would you want to know that a major European bank was searching for repository solutions?  How would your sales staff feel if they could receive an email instantly telling them of the visit – would they not jump all over that potentially red hot lead?

Maybe your business supplies security products and a major player is checking you out – wouldn’t you want to know immediately?

This kind of strategic business intelligence can give you the edge over your competitors as well as providing valuable feedback about the visitors you are reaching so you can improve your site to make it more attractive.

Its not necessarily valuable for all business to business companies as only the bigger players can be identified as specific organisations.  However, if these are your target audience then you might want to check it out – it could be the strategic advantage you are looking for.

Last week Strategy exhibited at AdTech 2008.  We had the stand immediately to the left of the entrance so we were often the very first stand that visitors encountered – it was a great spot!

Our headline was PAY PER RESULTS SEO…. “where’s the catch?” Someone asked….. another said “where do I sign?”  There isn’t a catch, we replied and “sign here”.  Actually we didn’t say that last bit but we are certainly speaking with a good number of very interested prospects.  The show is an opportunity for us to get our message out and to make contact with prospects and partners but the real value is in the discussions that follow afterwards.

It is essential to us that all clients understand the value we look to add to their business so we never sign anyone up without a technical discussion about your own specific website.  During this process we talk about how we look at your business objectives, audit your site and plan a strategy to get you more of the end results you are looking for – be it sales or leads.

Our pricing really is based on results so yes, we will charge you nothing at all until our work starts to bring you the targeted traffic we are aiming for.  This means we have to do do a significant amount of work for no payment but if we offer you this pricing it is because we are confident that we will deliver a good result for you.  We consider a good result to be traffic that will make your business grow because when we help you grow your business we know that you will want to stay with us.

We are also quite easy to work with which means the whole process is painless, transparent and quite enjoyable.

If we met you at the show Steph, Liesel or John will be following up shortly if they haven’t spoken to you already.  If you weren’t at the show but want to know more call us on 0845 838 0936.

PAY-PER-RESULTS SEO (PPR) has changed the lives of my staff at Strategy Internet Marketing in just a year since we launched it. There are many more of them, they are better paid, and there is a
buzz about the place.

In an industry that has suffered from snake oil merchants but still demands that clients take all the risk by paying fees, it struck me that there must be a way of sharing the risk. We first dreamed up a pricing model which was a hybrid mix of fees and results in order to share the risks with the client. This was successful and, after trials, we went the whole hog and priced just on results. The clients love PAY-PER-RESULTS SEO (PPR), they know your skills, reputation and fees are on the – line if you don’t perform you don’t get paid.

That rather focuses the mind on the job in hand. And that has brought us talking to some of the biggest names in UK business from groceries to electrical goods and from cosmetic surgery to finance.

Interestingly, it has also brought to the table many clients who, while they may be spending a lot on PPC, have been shy of trying organic optimisation. There are many prospective clients who have been burned in the past by the snake oil merchants promising the earth and not performing. You know the sort – “you will get a guaranteed top 10 position or your money back”. Getting a top ten position (particularly for a poor key phrase) is just bunk. What clients want is traffic, and good quality traffic that will buy the goods or services that they are selling. And they are happy to pay if you can bring them that traffic. Look at the success of PPC; this is a results based model and some clients are paying literally millions of pounds a year on this service.

We started with charging on increased visitors, and we probably have half our clients on this basis. But we don’t just go for volume of visitors; we also increase the quality of the traffic.

“…fees are on the line – if you don’t perform you don’t get paid”

Recently we have added a second pricing model, which we have dubbed PAY-PER-ENQUIRY SEO (PPE). This is based on the increased number of completed enquiry forms on the client’s own web site. Here we are taking a further risk as the visitors we attract have to be interested enough to complete the enquiry form. Many have shown an interest in this pricing model and we have started to take on clients with this.

Of course, we still do a fee based service too, and some clients prefer this because it allows them to budget accurately.

The important point though is that these are just pricing models. What we do in terms of organic optimisation on a client’s web site is the same regardless of which pricing model he has chosen. We still do a Strategic Action Plan and agree Objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s); we still research the competition; we still do deep, multilevel keyword research using many databases; we still obtain quality relevant inbound links, and still produce detail reports. The quality of how we do organic optimisation doesn’t change – there are just different ways of pricing it.

This pricing innovation has got Strategy Internet Marketing noticed, and brought us clients. And we plan to continue innovating, not just in pricing but also in ways of optimising, the types of service we provide and in levels of customer service too. Innovation brings results.

Don’t worry about my staff coping with more change though – they love the extra rewards and the buzz and embrace innovation.

See us at Stand No.1 at the Online Marketing and Media Show 08 on 24/25 June.