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What the Google Panda Update is likely to mean for your website ranking

There is strong speculation that the Google Panda update is to hit the UK search rankings this week having been launched in the US a few weeks ago.

Almost 12% of US websites were effected by this major change to the Google Algorithm.

The main focus of the panda update is poor quality links into your website.

Previously Google had a neutral view of poor links into websites, in that it had no positive effect on your Google ranking. However it DID have a mostly positive effect on your Bing & Yahoo rankings – which meant that if you had built 100′s of links for a fairly major key phrases, you could get quite an increase in traffic to your website – which in turn filtered through to your Google rankings, as Google saw an increase in your website visitor numbers (and popularity of your website is one of the ranking factors in the algorithm).

So what are poor links?

These are links that point to your website from other websites or article sites that either have no relevance to your industry or service, or worse, websites that have been created with the sole intention of providing a “link farm” back to hundreds of other sites.

Sites were created that had an “add url” option which were exploited by “link building companies” – meaning literally hundreds of meaningless links were being created back to websites they had been “assigned” to create good quality links for. These are very likely to get “caned” as the expression goes!!

So what can you do?

Firstly – check your site to see what links are actually pointing to your website. Probably the most accurate checker is the site explorer by Yahoo as this will often find more links to your website than trying Google’s search (which is link:websiteaddress without the www).

Secondly – if you haven’t got access to or haven’t installed Google Webmaster tools – then do this immediately as you will often see the links that Google can see (but don’t show up in the normal Google Link search mentioned above).

Thirdly – if you find links that are not relevant, or are part of a huge page of links to everyone under the sun – get them removed as quickly as possible. This can be done by trying to contact the website owner and asking them to remove them with immediate effect.

Fourthly – Keep a look out for your website showing on “fake blogs” – these are blogs that have been created solely to put a link into the editorial content of the blog (as these were seen more favourably by Google) – the easiest way to spot these is to look at some of the other blog posts – often you will see these are almost identical across several blog sites despite “supposedly” being about completely different subjects.

Links are meant to be useful to human beings – they are suppose to “add value” to a blog post by pointing people through to more information about a particular service (that they might be interested in when reading the blog), or they can be used to help people to navigate around your website whilst reading your content. Equally that can appear on industry relevant sites that people may have come across and might want more information on the type of work your company does.

They are NOT meant to be random, useless or add no value to a human being – and Google is doing something about these. It is about time IMHO as the good Search Engine Optimisation companies and consultants have often been hampered by some of these practices.

The Great SEO Lincolnshire challenge update #1

Back on the 15th September I wrote a blog about an experiment I was about to try for the search phrase SEO Lincolnshire. A quick recap was that I hadn’t considered the phrase before and after research decided it was worth a try.

Realistically I should have posted before today, as I had reached the lofty heights of 2nd position in Google, however as of today I am currently in bronze medal position (3rd!).

The next stage of this experiment, now I have made the necessary adjustments to my web page (and website), is to embark on a link building programme to see how much influence this will have. It SHOULD make a significant difference however only time will tell.

Keep your eyes peeled for update number 2 on the Great SEO Lincolnshire experiment.

5 Tell Tale Signs Your AdWords Campaign Was Not Set Up By A Google AdWords Certified Partner

I have come across several Google AdWords accounts recently that have prompted my to write this blog – if you have a Google AdWords campaign that either a) You have set up yourself or b) Have had your web developer set up for you or even c) Have a company reputedly say they are a Google AdWords certified partner set one up for you then these are 5 tell tale signs that it could probably be vastly improved.

1. Your keywords are all on a broad match basis. If your keywords are ALL on a broad match basis then you will be wasting vast amounts of your marketing budget. By having your Google AdWords on a broad match basis you effectively give Google the “permission” to show your AdWords advert whenever it sees fit – for example an office furniture company’s AdWords were showing when people were searching for Auction House. This is called extended broad match and is when Google decides that two topics “might be” related and the searcher “might” be interested in your products or services – bad, bad, bad….The solutions are – refined broadmatch keywords (whereby you place a + in front of each keywords in your list), Phrase match (whereby you place “” around each keywords), Exact Match whereby you place [] around your keywords or at the very least add hundreds of negative keywords (whereby you add – before the keywords you do not want to show your AdWords advert for).
2. Your Keywords Are All On AutoBid. Any Google AdWords Professional will (almost) never use the Google Autobid facility as it will never be in your favour – always have your keywords as manual bids and control (up and down) the amount you are wanting to pay – if a keyword becomes too expensive simply pause it.
3. Conversion Tracking is missing. Almost every Google AdWords campaign should have some form of Conversion Tracking added to it. Whether this is a brochure download, a completed enquiry form or a call back form – you can easily generate code that your web developer can add to the relevant parts of the website. This is vital in knowing which keyword(s) are generating actions and enquiries via your website. Ultimately your Google AdWords campaign is about understanding which keywords and phrasing are bringing you the most cost effective amount of business or enquiries and trying to concentrate and expand on these.
4. Your AdWords are showing on both the search network and the display network within the same campaign. Showing your AdWords in both the search network and display network of Google can reap rewards for some businesses. Different businesses have different performances on both of these platforms however the Click through rate of your AdWords on the display network will usually be massively different to those that show on the search network. By having them combined in one campaign means that the click through rate will show an average across both, which in turn will effect the quality score of your advert. The lower your quality score the more money you need to pay per click to maintain the position you hold in the search network. Each platform should be kept separate and monitored separately.
5. The biggest tell tale sign of all. The search terms button. When you log into your Google AdWords account you need to drill down to ADWORD GROUP LEVEL (i.e. each individual AdWords Group) – you will see below your graph and above your keywords a button saying “SEE SEARCH TERMS” – hit this button to see exactly WHAT your AdWords advert has been triggered for – this is where you will see the fruits (or not) of having your account on a broad match basis. We looked at a potential new client recently who had paid a company to set up their AdWords campaign – he was unhappy that he had spent £500 in “clicks” and didn’t feel he had anything to show for it. When we looked in this tab over 50% of his budget had been spent on people searching for JOBS in his industry (which he absolutely wasn’t looking for) – a classic example of how dangerous and costly bidding on a broad match basis can be.

Liam Lally – Google AdWords Certified Partner.

5 reasons why your business should be using google adwords

There are 5 good reasons why your company should be using google adwords:

1. Your advert will show at the precise moment someone is expressing an interest in the service or product you offer (or on a website looking at information that relates to your business or product). This is subject to the keywords being chosen carefully in the first place I.E. Not broad match.
2. You can target mobile users only with a “click to call” advert – this means you would only pay for the click when someone physically calls your business.
3. You can target visitors to your website with a “reminder” image adwords (such as banner ads across the top of a website, skyscraper ads down the left or right hand side of a website, or rectangular / square ads that appear in or beside the content of a website) this would ONLY show to them and would appear on all websites that ran google adsense ads. These image ads can also be tailored to be page specific (for example, someone visiting your pandora bracelet page can be shown an image ad promoting your pandora bracelet for the next 30 days).
4. You can target Internet users within a certain radius of your business e.g. 50 mile radius or a custom shape covering different towns, villages and cities. This is determined either by ip address or people adding location to their google account or toolbar.
5. Everything is measurable – you will be able to work out that for every £1 you spend you get £x back. Using conversion tracking codes and click to call measures you will be able to determine your most productive adwords and keywords.

5 Reasons why SEO MUST be considered at the START of any website build

There is one question that is often repeated when I am attending business networking events:

When should I consider using an SEO expert?

EVERY search engine optimisation person will tell you – AT THE VERY START of your website development process.

Why?

1. Firstly, a Search Engine Optimisation consultant will look to see HOW people search for your business, product or service. Too often do I come across business owners who THINK they know how people search (and build their website that way) and don’t actually look and learn about how people search for their services. Other times it can be the web developers who look at other websites for ideas and inspiration and NOT at how people search, so if the websites they look at have the structure mentioned in point 3, guess what happens. 
2. The SEO expert can now start the process of looking at what competition you are likely to face across ALL the different key phrases they have found. This can then set realistic expectations about how long it might take to get to the first page of Google (and the other search engines). They might also unearth some great niche areas with search traffic but less competition. What would be the point in trying to get to the first page of Google for “insurance” (unless you were working with a large organisation with a very old, high page ranked website), you would have a monumental task, as you would be up against some very well established websites with old domains, highly popular and with lots of links to them. Instead the SEO’er might be looking at breaking this down further, for example “insurance for lady drivers” or “farmers house insurance” etc.
3. Next, the SEO person can then put the website structure together FROM A CLIENT PERSPECTIVE – after all, the website is being built for the client NOT the business (or at least most websites are built to attract new clients). This often means more DEPTH to your website. How often do you come across websites that have this next structure:

• Home Page
• Products (summary of all products client offers – often on one page, occassionally several pages)
• Services (summary of all services client offers, again sometimes one page, sometimes several pages)
• About Us (Or History)
• Contact Us

For me this is almost pointless – unless you simply wanted a “web presence”, having everything lumped into this structure (and believe me there are 10,000′s of websites out there that appear to all “need” the same structure – at this point I am rolling my eyes!), is suicide from an SEO perspective. You might be lucky and get an odd couple of pages onto the first page – but what a MISSED OPPORTUNITY to get more detailed, relevant content seen by your potential clients.

4.  You can now start to plan all the individual pages, and how they can all fit within an easy navigation structure. The mega menu drop downs that we have seen appearing on a more regular basis, mean that people can navigate a huge website easier – see B&Q’s website as an example of a great navigation system for a massive site with thousands of pages. Don’t get trapped into thinking – “I sell lots of different office chairs” so I will just have an “office chairs” page. You need to go further than that and have a page for all the different TYPES of office chair you sell. Again, think about this from a customer perspective, if they are looking for an Ergonomic Office Chair, why would they want to see a generic office chair page? They want to see an Ergonomic Office Chair page – and if they do they are much more likely to engage with your website. Also having this structure in place can be beneficial to any pay per click campaigns you might want to run, and should result in a higher quality score if you use Google AdWords correctly.

5. You now have the structure of what could be a brilliantly optimised website. Having so many different phrases and pages, means that you have now increased your chances of getting first page listings on Google across a multitude of different search phrases that YOU WANT TO ATTRACT to your website. Some of these might appear very quickly, others might take longer, however Google will LOVE the fact that you have lots of relevant pages, that are more focused on each product or service, rather than a generic one page fits all approach. YES, I understand this means writing loads more content, YES I understand this means it will cost more than you originally wanted and YES I understand that sometimes it seems odd to be talking about two very closely related products or services, HOWEVER if people search in both ways (in enough volume to make it worthwhile having a page for each) then give them BOTH options. Let the client decide if it is what they are looking for, rather than trying to make the decision for them.

What you want to avoid is saying to an SEO expert “Hi, please can you optimise my website for me, it has just been finished by the web developer”. Why? Because it might upset you when they say “Okay, we need to start again……”

We are always on the look out for web developers and web designers we can work alongside. If you interested in our Search Engine Optimisation consultancy, or our Google Pay Pay Click management service, please contact me at sales@zaddle.co.uk.