New Guy Starts Monday

We have been fantasising over the years about how we can get 90 keywords to the top spots in the search engines and we have known for a long time how to do it, but just haven’t had the resource nor the drive to really get there. We have some new energy being injected into the office on Monday with our latest recruit Paul. In retrospect looking back over the years we have accomplished numerous achievements with the outdoor toy industry on the web, but haven’t really cracked the big markets like Trampolines. We have new ambition and a new drive now though with our third team member joining the pack. Google and the internet has changed so much over the last few years and it’s only right that we change with it. What does that mean though? We have to be smarter, faster, harder and better. How are we going to get there? That is where the hive theory comes in, everyone’s part in the greater good of the outcome. Social media is the new keyword, but does it really have a long lasting future? I’m not sure, i have about 12-15 different social media accounts all over the place generally feeding off each other. The result? A lot of babble that i don’t think makes a difference. The key is to get your website written right, laid out well, optimised to the right terms and get links from relevant content sites. It’s only a matter of time until google bins the social media linking network with a new algorithm and people will have to find a new way to spread their network web. I have always been a firm believer in the old school and he hard knock way. Let’s see what our new recruit brings to the table and gets our creative minds active again. I will keep you posted on our 90 keyword results.

Ciao

Hard Work Pays Off

Monday was an interesting day in our little outdoor toy world, i walked into the office to find a huge ranking change across Google which has benefited and destroyed others in the same sweep. No one really has a definitive answer to what is currently going on in the Google domain, but we have noticed a big change in the results the last few days. Primarily all the black hat and dodgy linking sites have been relegated to the sandbox position of 30 and below and all the natural sites have hit top 10 positions. Including our Trampolines Website that we have been working on for quite some time now, but have refused to go down the root of paid links and grey seo tactics. It seems that our persistence has finally started paying off, hell it’s not no.1 but it’s better than nothing. My main message really is, Google is fair, they take time and sometimes we feel cheated by always trying to do things the right way in the seo world, but our day will come. Google always catches up with all the mass linking and black hat sites, it inspires at least some hope. I thought i would just share a quick positive message with everyone to say don’t give up. Everything takes time, a lot of hard work and patience.

What is Google Page Rank?

Page Rank is the way Google Measures Your Website, It Determines your Rank in Google’s Search Engines. If you still don’t quite understand Page Rank the Formula below might help.

So how do you get page rank? Page rank is determined by popularity and links, the more websites linking to you the higher the page rank. If lots of relevant websites are linking to you then it will tell Google you are the best site to go to and it will also tell Google what your website is about, for example if your site is about sports then you will need to get links from sports blogs and sports communities and not Restaurant Review Sites and Funny Picture Sites.

So how many links will I need? Well it isn’t always about the amount of links it is about the link itself. When a website links to you it is giving you some of its ranking. For Example if a Page Rank 8 Directory Linked to you it would not be as strong as a Page Rank 2 Forum because the Directory is going to be linking to hundreds of sites where as the Forum is probably only linking to 2 or 3 Websites, The Formula below might help,

How Should I Link? When linking you must always make sure it is relevant, so the correct linking text and the correct websites. If you link to your website saying “Click here” or “Visit My Site” then Google is going to think you are about “Click Here” and “visit my site” You must use words like “African Safaris” and “Sports Shop” so then Google thinks you are about “African Safaris” and “Sports Shops”, The same applies for Image Links, Make sure you use the correct Alt Text. Relevant Sites are just as important as your Linking Text, If you get a link from a Directory, Google is not going to know what your site is about however if you get a link from a Forum or Blog relevant to your subject then it will know exactly what you are about, You must also look out for spammy sites as Google does not like you to be one of the many thousand links on that site it wants you to be the individual.
Hope this Helped…

Google No.1 Position

Today I had an interesting conversation funnily enough with one of my competitors. He just managed to hit the number 1 spot on a highly sought after keyword. However he was just confirming my suspicions while we chatted about reaching the top of our treasured market, the keyword phrase that we all covet. The funny thing though is that his sales weren’t affected by his hitting no.1, his traffic was up but the conversions were low. What does that mean to us? Well first off the keyword was to generic, a very broad term word that usually creates traffic where people are researching that subject. Let’s say the word was “Nintendo” for want of a word. I won’t use the specific word as I respect my competitors privacy on the web. Anyhow, Nintendo. That is a term that all of us have become very familiar with over the last 2 years with the introduction of the infamous “Wee” into the market. However if you are a retailer that sells Nintendo Wee’s, is “nintendo” the ultimate word to aim for. The holy grail of words that is untouchable, the no.1 position where thousands of orders are just waiting. Well, not really. Nintendo is a very broad term, think of how many products Nintendo do, are the customers even looking to buy a console, or are they looking for games. The whole point of being no.1 is to convert, the way to convert is have the right item, with the right information at the right price and at the right position. Make sure that you are no.1 on the right term though, so in this case if you were retailing the “wee” you would optimise for the term “Nintendo Wee” not “Nintendo”. That way you are targeting your traffic, giving people what they want and converting your customers. Not all No.1′s are the best places to be when it comes to generic terms. That’s my thought for the day. If anyone else has an opinion on this that’s different, please drop me a comment and I’ll be happy to discuss it.

Ciao.

Vista 64 Bit and Google

I thought i would share this little gem of information with everyone as i thought it was quite useful. I recently had a computer upgrade to a 64Bit Vista system, i must admit my initial feelings were reserved as i’m not a huge fan of vista. However the computer has turned out to be a fantastic buy and is certainly a lot faster on the 64bit system with the upgrades. How does this all relate to Google though, well it’s seems that the pioneers of technology don’t support 64bit systems in some of their software packages. I tried to download, and i have to say brilliant google desktop only to find that it’s incompatable. To say the least i was pretty suprised as Google always seems to be one step ahead of everyone in terms of realising technology and upgrades that actually work.
I did however find a workaround, this blog post came in really handy: http://pleasemakeanote.blogspot.com/2009/02/install-google-desktop-on-vista-64-bit.html

NB: When running that script, make sure it matches the actual name of your installation file.

Thank you to Ynot on that one, 10 points to you chap for working that out. Installed perfectly on my system.

Google Adwords Guide

Today i thought i would talk about probably one of the most controversial topics in the web advertising industry, time and again i have sat and listened to Md’s grumbling away about their web team and the ad-words spend that produces no results. The general consensus is that the ad-words campaign is turned off after the first 3 months of painful expenses and few conversions. Does this mean that adwords is a waste of time and money, just another way that the tech savvy google and web company’s can make money. Or does this mean that the bulk of business’s out there who are not using a decent Internet advertising company or in house seo expert just don’t know how to use adwords properly? Well the answer is yes to both of those questions actually.

There can be no question that Google is out there to make money, the fact is they are a business. Owned by people just like the rest of us and we all want our piece of the pie, in retrospect you have to respect what they have managed to accomplish in such a short space of time. However this is a 2 sided coin, as much as google want their share , they also want to give their customers the best service possible.

Now this is where you come in as the small business owner, this is our cost effective way in. Google needs high conversion sites, sites that produce good quality content and offering the right product and services for their chosen sectors. Now this where we can develop our relationship with google and actually have a quite mutually beneficial interest in each others businesses. If you can produce a site that contains good quality content, has a high page view factor, low bounce rate and great goal conversion. Then why wouldn’t google naturally bump you up the list over the other company’s who may even be paying more for their adwords? That is the google code of conduct after all isn’t it, to better themselves and the people by serving the right results against the right keywords. Now how does this affect us and what are the next steps? Below are a few pointers that i have learnt along the way when it comes to google adwords and how to run the campaigns:

1. Keywords: Start every campaign with keywords, most company’s go for the placement option. I advise against this and would go for the keywords as the positions will naturally fall into place afterwards. Choose your keywords carefully! Let’s have an example to illustrate that, say i wanted to advertise my Travel Website that specialises in African Safaris. What keywords would i use? Most people would immediately say Safari, is that the right start? Not at all, first off that’s to generic, remember that apple designed a browser called safari. Now would it be any good when someone looking for the browser sees your ad splayed across the page while he’s trying to download his browser? There would be a perfect example of a very expensive campaign that would yield low results.  Let’s get more specific, what country are your safaris in? What region? What type of safaris? Price Range? Now you are starting to get an idea of what audience you are targeting and what your spend is.
2. Ads: Now that you have your keywords, you start writing out your ads. The same principle applies here again, who are you targeting and what would they want to see in that ad? Slapping something together like this:

African Safaris

Book an amazing safari in Africa
with African Adventures!

This will cost a fortune have a high click through rate but a low conversion rate. Why? Well first of all the ad is so broad that anyone looking for anything Safari related will click on it. Generally at this stage people are still trying to find out what country they want to go safari in and this creates the low conversion rate. You have just sold your holiday to Kruger National Park to one of your competitors by being a fantastic and expensive billboard, and nothing else. Narrow it down, rather advertise your exact safari details for that person looking to close the deal and book their holiday. Something like this:

Namibia Desert Safaris

Packages From Only $1500 PP/N
Full 5 Star Lodges. Touch The Wild.

Using the right combination of keywords such as Namibia desert safari, Namibia holiday safari etc. You are targeting the converting audience who have browsed around, done their homework and now want to pay someone to book their holiday. In your ad you have been specific on the location, the type of holiday and what they can expect to pay against what they will receive. The best part is, that add would probably cost you a tenth of what the African safaris add would have and have a 50% higher conversion rate.

3. Target Advertising: Google has taking the advertising concept even further now by introducing the various options into adwords. Let’s have a chat about some of them:

• Demographics: This is quite an important one, i would advise now to have a look through your web analytics stats. What you are looking for is where most of your visitors come from. There is no point targeting traffic in country’s where you either get no traffic from or where there is no point in advertising in those regions trying to offer your services. Pull in your net and be more specific on your target areas of where you want your ads to appear. For instance there is no use advertising holiday packages in the Gaza strip, those boys have other things on their minds.
• Content, Search and Advertising Partners: This is a mixed one, everything works differently for each company and the type of services/goods you provide. I for one only use the google search to advertise, i feel the content search is overwhelmed with ad sense hackers and proves to have a low conversation rate. The advertising partners i have the same view on, i for one have never clicked an add on you tube, face book and the rest and feel that it’s a rather expensive endeavour.
• Tools: Use the google tools, run the campaign optimisers, they generally have some good tips. Watch your spend though as they tend to try push your bids up.

4. Money: It all comes down to money in the end, there is a little tip here though. Initially your ad campaigns will be a bit pricey, but once you start getting a decent conversion rate you can start bidding google down. They are held at a bit of a ransom here in a sense that they don’t want to let a high converson site drop it’s positions, but they also want to make their cut. This one you have to just finesse, you will start to get the feel over time and gradually you will spend less and gain more.

That’s about it, the only other thing i can suggest is as a small business. Do the campaigns in house, outsourcing can be very expensive and generally the company you outsourcing to doesn’t really understand the market as well as you do.

The other thing is, and i won’t lie. Doing adwords the right way is damn hard work. If done properly though it can really pay off.

That’s all the words of wisdom i have for today, i welcome any questions or comments and i hope you enjoy my little insight into the world of adwords.

The Googler.

Small Company Start Ups And SEO

I had an interesting meeting this morning regarding a MD2MD session where someone is trying to start up a company where he stands in as a interim director for businesses. Very interesting concept, but how would you optimise for that? There are thousands of business coaches and business management company’s already out there squeezing the market. Well Bob has decided to go for the local market, the best course i think. The big boys already have the UK market, more than likely then they won’t have the time to deal with the small business market. Which in reality may be the ones that need the help, but the question is how is he going to get his exposure.

The first part is done really in the sense that he has decided to target local instead of national, so we target local SEO terms. Google obviously is the engine to target and they have the tools to promote you locally. So what do you do? Well here’s a few insider tips that we discussed with the client:

• Firstly get your website into all the local directorys for your area.
• Second: DMOZ directory allows you to register not only under your target category, it allows you to register your website in your area, giving you the ability to optimise for your area.
• Third: Register your business on google maps. Even if people are searching in an area other than your home town, google is smart enough to associate that area with your business. This is a must!!!
• Fourth: Do targeted adwords for your area/county. Not only does this mean that you are targeting the right audience, it also means that your campaign is cost effective. Make the ads relevant though, emphasising that you are offering the goods/services in that are specifically. People are used to the ad-words system now and being broad on your ads just destroys your click through rates.
• Fifth: Optimise your own website content to reflect that you are targeting your own local market.

Just a little tip for small business start up owners, it’s not all about the design. Your website will take at least 6 months to get decent exposure across the board with a lot of seo work in most categories. Don’t fret over how the website looks right now until you start getting some decent traffic going, and try avoid the flash. Unless you are a web guru, there is no point restricting yourself in the beginning by building a beautiful website that google can’t read.

There we have it, a few tips for the day for all those small business start up people out there.

The Googler

Hello world!

Right i thought i would just do this “hello world” thing and get it out of the way. Well Hello World, i know there is a lot about google already out there and everyone who isn’t either a seo geek and in love with google or a retailer. No one really wants to hear anymore about google, please save us. However, i’m here to talk about google. I believe and I’m directing this mainly to retailers specifically that a lot of people misinterpret what the whole SEO and Google philosophy is. Lost in an abundance of information and techno jargon, people spend thousands only to be disappointed by a failed ad-words campaign or a badly developed website. So I’m here as a person that manages a small outdoor toy firm with a team of two guys in a n office making a mark in the world and making some money while we at it. I hope you enjoy reading through the forthcoming posts and i look forward to hearing from you.

Ciao
The Googler