Forget advanced SEO fix the basics first

I had a prospective client approach me the other day about conducting what they called "advanced SEO tactics" for their site.

They had obviously read some SEO blogs and thought they needed to apply some clever technical (and in some regards... slightly dodgy / grey hat) practices in the belief that this would instantly give them a boost in their organic rankings.

Now its kinda hard to tell a client "no" who is keen on learning all about digital marketing, especially when their heart is in the right place. But in this instance the client hadn't implemented some pretty basic 'white hat' SEO techniques already, such as:

1. Creating an XML sitemap (sitemap.xml) that updates regularly (e.g. daily) 
2. Optimising all page titles
3. Optimising all page meta descriptions*

*yes, I know that meta descriptions are not a direct SEO ranking signal for the main search engines and I hope by now you have deleted your meta keywords!

However I firmly believe that fixing and optimising these on-page factors.. allied with a decent approach to content creation, will have more of a long-term & quality improvement upon a site's rankings than the latest technical SEO ideas.

Do you optimise for organic conversions?

I read recently that on average 70% of website traffic comes from the results that are obtained from online search engines.  This aligns with with my own experience and means that site owners really need to make sure they are making the most of their organic website traffic.

Conversions are the common industry term for a task that ends in success, a goal. And it is about time you ensure your search engine optimisation efforts are focused around conversions generated by the organic results you get from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

But if your site exists to generate online leads or actual sales for your company, then you shouldn't just be optimising your site for visits, you should be optimising your site for conversions.

But how do you do this?
1. What if you don't know what search terms are actually landing and converting?

2. What if you have no control over which pages are actually displayed in the SERPs (search engine results pages)?
3. What if your SEO efforts are more 'suck it and see' than structured?

Why do I see 'Not Provided' in my SEO agency report?

Since October 2011 Google has increasingly been hiding the actual terms used in organic searches. This has been done by Google as they “believe that protecting these personalized search results is important”.

http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/making-search-more-secure-accessing.html

However, Google has only hidden these terms for organic searches and is seemingly prepared to overlook this privacy issue for its paid-for marketing service AdWords (or as search engine specialist Danny Sullivan put it more bluntly, Google Has Put A Price on Privacy )

These hidden search terms are now reported in Google Analytics under a generic “Not Provided” category and the comparative size of this catch-all segment has been steadily increasing over time. In fact, aggregated industry figures now put this figure as high as around 80% for some sites, with a major increase seen in the 3rd quarter of 2013.
http://www.notprovidedcount.com/

Whilst there are some work-arounds to try to get some insight from this missing data, site owners have no real option but to ‘like it or lump it”, use the data they still have available for search engine optimisation and hope the figure doesn't get any higher in the future.

The signs that Google is killing the SEO industry

It's funny that the Internet search engine that really defined the work of search engine optimisation practitioners over the last decade is now giving several signs that it wants to kill that industry off.

1. The removal of organic results from the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)
In a post a year ago, I commented on how little of the organic search engine results showed on the page of a normal user's screen for hotel-related searches. Back then I explained how very little actually appears above the 'page fold' on a decent size monitor and asked Google the question:

Are you trying to do away with the search engine optimisation industry entirely?

Well a year later the search giant has answered my question, by showing no organic results above the fold for certain search queries. E.g. "diabetes symptoms".

And with yesterday's announcement of 'Hummingbird' (the search giant's biggest change to their engine algorithm since the 2009 'Caffeine' overhaul), Google stated that  “around 90% of searches" would be affected. My initial take on this was "Great, I bet that means even more paid-for results appearing at the top of the page".

2. The removal of organic keyword information 
Unless you're in the SEO industry you might not have been following the recent developments in the ongoing [not provided] issue with Google.
To put this in a non-technical way... Google used to let's site owners see which words were driving organic search traffic to their site, via the Google Analytics tool they provide for free. However, over the course of a almost 2 years, the percentage of terms you get to see in GA has diminished to the point where now only 20 - 30% of the total are visible... and this is decreasing all the time.

Why? Well there has been various excuses for removing this incredibly valuable SEO source, from the generic "privacy" label through to the mention of "NSA snooping" (That's the National Security Agency, the internal spy organisation, similar in function to GCHQ, to us Brits).

However, despite all this bluster by the 'Big G' about protecting our privacy, Google still provides full disclosure about specific keyword usage to those who pay for it's AdWords Pay-Per-Click service. Thus putting a price on your privacy.

What is a good bounce rate?

This is an interesting question I thought I'd answer, primarily following a series of debates with friends and associates in the digital industry.

For those unsure what exactly is meant by the bounce rate, it is usually defined as those visitors to a site who only view one page of the same site in any one browsing session. The metric is calculated by dividing the total number of visitors by those who only view one page and then expressing this as a percentage. 

But is a high or low bounce rate a particularly good or bad thing? Let's take an example....

Imagine a company has a website that showcases their products and uses both SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques as well as Google Adwords for Pay-per-click digital marketing. When investigating bounce rates from their digital analytics we see that visitors from organic search engine sources have an approximately 40% bounce rate. This compares with a rate of around 55% for those coming from pay per click adverts over the same period.

Surely the bounce rate generated from the organic source is healthier? As less people come to the site and disappear straight away, this must surely mean that they are 'better' users is some way?

Or to flip it around, doesn't it therefore follow that the paid PPC campaigns are delivering less value than those from search engines?

Not necessarily.  

 A different bounce rate from different acquisition sources makes sense if you consider these factors:

1.      The landing pages for paid and organic traffic could be different.
Search engine optimisation is not an exact science and depending upon the search terms used, the page displayed in the search engine results pages (SERPs) might well be different from the one you really want them to go to. This may also be different from search engine to search engine. If this is the case, it is likely your paid efforts are pointing visitors to the page of your choosing and one that may well be optimised for this purpose.
Note: this may well mean that the users’ paths to complete their required goals are different and could affect the conversion rate.

2.      The paid advert copy might be different from your organic listing
Now far be it if for me to suggest that any upstanding company would deliberately mis-represent their site in PPC adverts to potential visitors.. but I have seen examples where the Ad Words copy significantly differs from the content of the target page. Now I’m all for experimentation to understand the optimum copy in each circumstance… but when the paid advert content sets an expectation with the person about to click on an ad, don’t be surprised if they bounce straight out if the page doesn’t meet those expectations.

3.      Different visitors use different searching techniques.

I know that I have differing browsing behaviour depending upon: the frame of mind I'm in, the device I'm using and the amount of time I have. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Online users also click on different paid placements depending on whether there are other PPC adverts displayed and the quality of the organic listings displayed alongside or below those precious Google Adwords ads.

Whatever your bounce rate, you should always take whatever steps you can, not just to minimise it, but to focus on optimising your collective set of site KPI’s and maximising the commercial opportunities your online presence gives you.

The philosophy of content marketing

In a previous post I posed the Content Marketing equivalent of a long-standing philosophical question "if words are written and nobody reads them, are they really content?"

But the creation of content doesn't exist in a vacuum. To succeed at content marketing you don't just need great content... You also need:

100% code:
Just developing HTML that just about qualifies as 'fit for purpose' at the time of testing not only means that you may have issues down the line (e.g. when a specific browser is slightly updated) but may also hamper some of your SEO efforts. For example, some blogging platforms (e.g. WordPress) can take quite a lot of effort to get them SEO-friendly.

Killer UX:
Creating a fantastic user experience helps visitors browse your site with ease and complete tasks you want them to using functionality and content to inform them at every relevant step of the user journey.
So does content marketing include the use of  A/B and multivariate testing (MVT) approaches to optimise the user experience? You betcha! Alternative versions of content can have significant influence on visitor bounce rates and understanding... which can lead to improved conversion.

Exemplary 'white hat' SEO techniques
Forget the grey and murky areas of questionable search engine optimisation actions, your content marketing efforts have to be based on sound and utterly legitimate techniques. Why? Well thanks to the recent Google algorithm updates there is now an the even greater chance that less than honourable techniques could negatively affect your website's organic rankings.

Insight from digital analytics
A good analytical understanding of what your visitors are doing when they get to your website gives you the knowledge to evolve your content (text, imagery , video , animations, etc.) by changing it rapidly to respond to trends.

Who’s afraid of the big bad penguin?

If you’re around the search engine optimisation industry (or in any way connected it to it) then you will hear the words ‘Panda’ and ‘Penguin’ being mentioned more and more in hushed tones these days.

Fear not… these are not some frightening polar animals we are all cowering in fear of, but updates to the Google algorithm that can affect your site’s organic search rankings. Or to be more precise, they are actually a series of different updates to the algorithm to clean up the search engines results pages to display ‘better’ sites that Google thinks are a more relevant match for our query Panda updates started happening in early 2011 and were aimed at reducing the impact of low quality websites in Google’s results. Penguin updates started happening a little later in April 2012 and targeted sites that used ‘black hat’ SEO techniques. Both have had updates by the clever people at the world’s most popular search engine since their launch and are now key events that the digital marketing community gets excited about…. trust me, we do!

However, Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts has recently stated that there will be a large Penguin update in 2013. One that will have a big impact that could affect a lot of sites. Sites who have so far used search engine optimisation approaches that sit in that grey-ish area between entirely ethical SEO and the darker world of dodgier techniques. The original Penguin release had a big effect on organic rankings for a number of sites (and not just the black hat technique ones). However the forthcoming update is due to be deeper and have a bigger effect than those before.

What effect? Well that's anyone's guess, however anyone who has used less-than-legitimate to get their site up the organic rankings may soon find out that this new penguin makes search engine optimisation a lot more black and white.

What's the value of a single link?

Today I'm carrying out an experiment, to see what the value of a single link from my blog to a client site is actually worth.

Mactaggart & Mickel Homes

Having posted the link in this blog post, the aim is for me to measure:

1. How quickly a hyperlink to the site is recognised by the popular search engines
2. The direct traffic this delivers
3. The potential impact upon organic placements (if any)

Note:
I will post on any findings I undercover (if they are allowed in the public domain)

Google - just how much is adverts?

In yesterday's post I put up a screen grab of a Google results page for the term 'car insurance'.

Looking back at this image again, I was struck by just how much of the screen is actually covered by adverts. Or to put it another way... what happens if we take the same screen and remove the pay-per-click adverts and link to Google's sponsored promotion for its own car insurance aggregation product.

Quite telling isn't it?

Google is back with car insurance

Has anyone else recently done a search for car insurance?

Well,if you has done this about a month ago you'd have seen the screen shown in my recent posting.

However, I checked Google only recently (e.g. a couple of days ago) and the sponsored link to 'Compare Car Insurance - with Google" has disappeared between the organic and the PPC links.

Well, I checked Google again tonight and low-and-behold, the sponsored link is back.

But with one slight amendment.... where previously the search engine boasted quotes from 120+ providers, the language in the advert has subtly changed to 'Compare up to 110 Insurance Providers'.

Has Google possibly got issues with the number of insurance providers on its panel?