In this week's video I do a SEO site review for a viewer. The site is ranking pretty well already for a few phrases but not so well for the phrases that will bring the big traffic. In fact he is buying adwords for those ones. When I took a look at his competition in the SERPs it did not seem that strong. No mega link pig sites with giant amounts of regularly updated content. In fact one of the sites above him is very static with little content. So why was that site beating his? Simple - it was the SEO basics.
It's not Google you're trying to beat.
Once you have decided on your main phrases have a look at what the no.1 ranking spot is doing. Here are the 4 main things check
1. Backlinks - How many do they have & what is the quality of them like. If they're getting links from relevant blog posts and forums they're high quality links. You can check this with Open SIte Explorer
2. Keyword Prominence - Can you see that main keyphrase in their page title? How frequent is it on the ranking page? Is there a link off the front page to other pages in the site that target that keyphrase? Do they use heading tags?
3. How regularly do they update content? If they have a blog that is updated frequently it gives them the opportunity to write more about their target phrases and gets the googlebot coming back on a regular basis.
4. How much content do they have and how old is it. People sometimes think that a really old site is hard to rank above, it's not. A really old site that is updated regularly and keyword focused, is. Using the search in Google site:yourcompetitor-url.com you will get an idea of the volume of content that your competitor has in the index and the frequency of their updates.
Just do it... better
In many cases, like the one in this week's video, you may only need to improve one of the above elements to get to no.1 position. You don't NEED a blog for SEO. If your competitor has one though and they rank above you and are considered a "though leader" in your industry, then maybe it's time to think about it. For most small businesses this isn't the case though. It's simply examining what Google likes about the no.1 ranking page and doing it better. If you find that your main phrase is highly competitive, consider using a geodescriptor. For instance if you only service the Melbourne area, append your phrases with the word Melbourne if you think people would be looking for a local supplier. It will be easier to rank for and is more targeted.
Google Search Plus your World, which launched two weeks ago, isn't nearly as bad as some of the headlines would have you believe. In fact it will one day be an invaluable tool for every business looking to improve their rankings. Here are some things you should be doing with Google+ to begin reaping the rewards of personalised search results
Become an author
I've written and spoken about Google authorship a lot. Google will now start making individuals more prominent than ever for certain searches. If you are a Business Coach in Melbourne, how good would it be if your photo turned up when someone did a search for "Business Coach" when in Melbourne. That is amazing personal branding and authority. The way to achieve that sort of ranking is through regular publishing either on your own blog and/or other publications, and to make sure your Google profile is setup properly. If you employ several consultants nationally you may want to think of a content publishing strategy for each of them so they have the potential of turning up as Authors in relevant searches.
Setup the Google+ brand page.
If your company has multiple brands, set one up for each brand. This will eliminate the problems some brands have with other sites ranking above them for their own brand and has the possibility of decreasing your AdWords spend if you are currently buying that space. Importantly it will give your customers direct and easy access to your brand. Don't forget a large majority of Google searches are brand searches as people find it quicker to Google a brand than guess their web address.
Use Google+
I know some will say I'm playing into Google's hands here but Google+ has some great opportunities for businesses to network and expose their message to a targeted audience. For example, if your customers and potential business partners are likely to follow sport in a defined geographical area, you can look for them with a simple Google+ search. Circle them if you find their content interesting and hopefully at some point they will circle you back if they find your content interesting. Gaining a following in your chosen areas is important.
Look for who is creating the ripples with their posts.
This will help you find potential influencers in your market and possibly other people you should be networking with. Google ripples is a relatively new tool that shows you the reach and life of someone's post in Google+.
The more people that circle you personally and your brand, the more often web pages you have shared will turn up on the first page of Google. This is not about gaming the system, it's about becoming an influencer in your market.
In case you missed it Google made some major changes last week (seems I say that a lot eh?). We haven't seen them roll out in AU yet but I got a chance to have a look at them & have a bit of a play. When they were launched Twitter came out & immediately said they were terrible for.. well pretty much everyone including Twitter users. There were a lot of other myths too.
People will stop using Google & move to Bing
Google Authorship, personalised search & search history are the same thing.
It's a major privacy breach
and of course.... its the end of SEO
None of these are actually true. Search Plus is a reorganisation of the data that Google was already displaying to you plus more of your own data. I used to use the Google desktop app when I was on Windows back in 2008 because it helped me find stuff on my PC quickly. Now that so much data is been moved to the cloud, a lot of the personal results you see may relate to photos you store on Google+ or some of your docs. Remember this won't be indexed for everyone. Just you. Like the your friend "shared this" results, you will see more Google+ results from your network. You can switch off the personalised results anytime you want.
Authorship is the big change.
As Rand Fishkin pointed out at SEOMOZ the big change that we are seeing is Authorship. Here is what author attribution has looked like for the last 6 monthsBasically just a photo along side the result. Now we will see it take it's own section of real estate on the search results page at the top right hand side. You will see the Google+ pages links of celebrities there as well as quality authors relevant for the search.
Authorship is about branding
Back in 2008 the then CEO of Google Eric Schmidt said the Internet was a cesspool and the only way to clean it up was via authenticated (my word) brands. This is pretty much what Authorship is. For a lot of searches this will stop the linkspammers in their tracks. This is the evolution of the old PageRank. Online Reputation Management just became a whole lot easier. Just get a bunch of mates with Authorship to write a nice article about you:)
What should your brand be doing?
Brands - At the very least key people in your organisation should have their Google profiles setup & your should claim Google+ pages for all your product brands.
Bloggers - Make sure you have authorship setup on your own blog & if you contribute to other properties make sure it is setup on profile & ask the other properties to setup authorship linking back to your Google profile. This is important! The more reputable publications that use your authorship the more influential in the SERPs your content will be.
Everyone - Get more people adding you to their circles. The more circles you are in the more time your recommendations / shares will appear. At some point I am sure we will see "cash for shares" paid to people with large following to influence the SERPs but if Google finds out you lose not only your ranking but all your Google accounts. Gmail, docs the lot. This is how they will clean up Eric Schmidt's "cesspool"
Enjoy the show :)
Google made a whopping 30 changes in December last year. While not all of them relate specifically to ranking, there are definite themes emerging. Today Google also started rolling out "Search plus your world", a major change to the way Google formats and personalises results for it's users.
To make sure you're ready for both Google's new algorithm changes and their "Search plus your world" rollout, here's the top three things you need to check and implement on your site.
1. Is you audience mobile?
Well let's face it, whose audience isn't. Purchases on mobile devices grew by a huge 200% last year. If you want to turn up in mobile search results you have to have a site that is at the very least mobile-friendly but preferably optimised for mobile. Google will not send it's mobile users to sites that are not at the very least mobile friendly.
2. Google+ and authorship.
@joshrowe and @jjprojects pointed out to me last night that people are already ripping complete blog posts, posting them to Google+ and then getting ranked above the original post. This is ironic, as one of the aims of Google profiles and authorship markup code is to establish the original creator of a piece of content. My guess is the results @jjprojects is referring to did not have authorship set up and connected to their Google profiles. This example and todays announcement that Google+ results are going to feature even more heavily in search results is a very good argument for getting your Brand Page setup and your Google profiles . Even if you don't have regular content updates on your site (which you should) you need to get Google+ setup properly before your competitors do.
3. 404s
This may not seem that important but it is a pet peeve of mine. One of the changes Google made in December was concerning "soft 404s". A 404 is an error code that a web server returns when a request for a page is made that it can't find. Some web developers and systems believe that instead of returning a 404 they'll just send you to the front page of the site or another page. The problem with this is that when the Googlebot encounters this it sees the same page at multiple addresses and crawls it multiple times so you site looks like it has lots of duplicate content and maybe a little spammy or repetitive. Not good for your rankings :)
Are you using Google+? Love to know if you have seen anomalies like @jjprojects or how you see it changing your search results.
For the first week back of the new year I have a look at last years prediction that a lot of our online freedoms would be attacked by Governments around the world. Certainly that was proven to be true and continues. What we have seen in retaliation to those threats is a corresponding rise in Internet activism/hactivism. Most recently with the Reddit community leading the charge to boycott domain name provider GoDaddy over their support for the Stop Online Privacy Act being pushed through in the US at the moment.
Iowa Caucus Results
Most topical right now of course is the Republican Presidential Primaries and the Iowa Caucus which is taking place as I write. There has been a lot more online political activism as opposed to party machine organisation than I have ever seen before online. Below is the graph from Google Insights that shows how the candidates are currently fairing for search volumes. You can see that the stand out is Ron Paul. How search volumes correspond to the ballot box is anyone's guess but we can see some interesting data as I point out in today's video. These Ron Paul supporters are so active online they can shoot a popstar to no.1 overnight because she said something nice about their candidate. They increased the sales of Kelly Clarkson's latest efforts by 600% overnight. I also take a look at the article today from Mashable on Twitter mentions and how that corresponds to the Iowa Caucus.
If you personally want to rank in Google news you could simply be a potty mouth on ABC live TV during Children’s viewing times. That’s what our Communications Minister, Senator Stephen “I’ll protect you’re children online… help I’m locked out of my iPhone” Conroy did yesterday. It was interesting to watch what Google chose to [...]
Although many businesses increase their marketing budgets during the holidays, many don’t bother to optimise their AdWords account for the festive season. While there are endless ways to capitalise on the rush of holiday shoppers, today we’re going to focus on how to easily produce holiday-specific ad copy and how to enable holiday-themed site link [...]
Twitter Gets a Makeover Twitter unveiled a design overhaul early Friday morning aimed at streamlining the popular social service. Ditching the two-panel design introduced just over a year ago, Twitter’s new interface cleans up the clutter and designed a new navigation system to find what you’re looking for in Twitter. Recognising the different ways in [...]
Twitter announced a major design overhaul earlier this morning, ditching their current dual-panel design for a simpler and easier to use interface. While the ‘New Twitter’ design that debuted last year tried to pack everything into one place, the redesign unveiled today targets the different types of users on the popular microblogging service. Power users [...]
In this week’s video I do a SEO site review for a viewer. The site is ranking pretty well already for a few phrases but not so well for the phrases that will bring the big traffic. In fact he is buying adwords for those ones. When I took a look at his competition in [...]
Myths, Benefits & Next Steps In case you missed it Google made some major changes last week (seems I say that a lot eh?). We haven’t seen them roll out in AU yet but I got a chance to have a look at them & have a bit of a play. When they were launched [...]
