All posts in Search Engine Optimization

Almost the end of the week

by Chris M on January 12, 2012 in Cape Town, My Life, Search Engine Optimization, Work with 19 Comments

I’m sitting outside falling in love with the cool breeze that is gracing Cape Town with its presence, trying to figure out how on earth it’s the end of the weekend already. Although it’s been an incredibly busy week, I can’t understand how we got from Monday to Thursday evening this quickly – don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, it’s my first full week of work this year so I’m dying to hit the weekend, but wow.

I landed a new client at work, a well known brand in fact and I’ve been tasked with managing all their SEO, so today was spent doing just that. My main focus today was some serious keyword research and a competitor analysis which lead me to a great set of keywords that I’m going to be working with, next step is updating all the meta data across the pages on the website.

Sidenote: SEO lesson:

I don’t want to bore those of you who aren’t into SEO, but seeing that I did everything today, I wanted to share some of my approach with you as it’s an effective approach.

The first step is to create a good basket of keywords, the way I do this is two fold: brand (or Andre coined the phrase ego keywords) and lead keywords. Brand keywords are those ones you want to rank for to be better than your competitor, lead keywords are keywords that actually lead people to your website who then get converted into customers. So, determining brand keywords is often best done by asking your clients what keywords they want to rank for, these keywords are then combined with a list of keywords that you come up with. So, for example, you might be doing SEO for a plumber, some brand keywords would be: best plumber, top plumber and so forth, whereas your lead keywords could be hire plumber cape town, plumbing service cape town and so forth – not the best example, but it exaggerates my point. Once you’ve got this basket of keywords, it’s time for the next step.

Fire up Excel or another spreadsheet program and create a column with all your keywords. Create several more columns:

  1. Results – the total number of results found in a Google search
  2. Top – The site that ranks number one for the keyword
  3. Anchor – How many results ranking have the keyword in the anchor texts, this is done by using inanchor:keyword in Google
  4. Title – How many results ranking have the keyword in the title, this is done by using intitle:keyword in Google

I also create a column where I put the sum of the results found in (3) and (4), this gives you some kind of strength prediction because title tags and backlinks are two of the big factors for ranking. Now, there are lots of other columns you could create, including more backlink values, page ranks and so forth, but I don’t like to go overboard too much because I get carried away with formula’s. There are lots of tools on the Internet that can assist you with finding out values for other ranking factors and you can add these in. A good column to have is actually the average daily (month/30) searches a keyword might receive.

Once you’ve create your document, it’s fairly easy to look through the columns and note which keywords have fairly high search volumes, but low title/anchor values, if you play around for a little you could sort the columns and isolate several keywords that might be worth targeting.

It’s a cool trick to find some worthwhile keywords to target – it’s worked time and time again for me.

Right, enough SEO talk!

Had a good time last night though, as I arrived home from work I received a message from the Harfield Village gang inviting me over for a wine ‘o clock, now if you remember, it was like 40 degrees in Cape Town, ever had wine in such heat? You have! Ok, then you know how the evening went ;) Was a lot of fun, catching up with friends, reflecting on the new year and just enjoying some down time. We’ve also booked a weekend away to do some camping in early March so I’m looking forward to that – 12 people, lots of tents, two cabins, rock pools and thousands of stars hopefully.. bliss.

So yeh, it’s been a good week both work wise and socially, but I can’t wait to sleep in on Saturday – oh yeh, that reminds me, I’ve got a guy coming to quote on putting a shower in, so perhaps I won’t be sleeping in too late, sigh

Have an awesome Friday everyone!

Don’t forget to update your copyright!

by Chris M on January 8, 2012 in Search Engine Optimization with 6 Comments

So we’re racing into 2012, week one is over already and we’re about to head towards the middle of the month; if you’ve been as busy as me then you’ve more than likely overlooked a few things, one of which involves the updating of the copyright on your website from 2011 to 2012.

This is important for three reasons:

  • Relevance
  • Trust
  • Care

If your website continues to say 2011, people might think that you don’t really care and in turn this will reduce trust. Of course, it’s rather irrelevant if you have 2011 on your website and not 2012. These factors do play a small role in SEO, so keep that in mind too please folks.

Bing has updated their copyright, but Yahoo! still reflects 2011, I wonder if I should pop them an email ;)

So, stop right now, fire up your FTP, open your web editor or pop your web designer an email and make sure that your copyright is updated!

And… Go!

Still no Email Scheduling or PDF Exporting in new Google Analytics

by Chris M on December 6, 2011 in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization with 2 Comments

If there are two functions that were incredibly important and useful in the old Google Analytics, it was email scheduling and PDF exporting, both of which aren’t available in the new Analytics even after Google announced that they would be, and should be by now.

On November 1, 2011 Google said, and I quote, “We are happy to announce that both email scheduling and PDF export functionality will be the new interface in a few weeks. We’re now 5 weeks since this statement and still don’t have access to the functions, I’m surprised they don’t put some icons on the interface and upon clicking have a popup that says “Not Provided” (sorry, lame SEO joke).

Sure, real-time analytics, multi-channel funnels and flow visualizations are awesome and incredible additions to the system, but those are new things that we still need to play with and get used to, email scheduling and PDF exporting are things that we’ve used over years and grown to depend on somewhat.

Come on Google, give us these functions back please!

The evolution of Search and what’s coming

by Chris M on November 28, 2011 in Internet, Search Engine Optimization with No comments

I love nothing better than when Google makes video’s about search – nobody else can do a better job so when Google rolls these video’s out, we know we’re getting the most accurate and up to date data. What’s exciting is that this video gives us a taste of what’s coming next in search.

Here are the three main items:

  • Universal Results: With Universal Search—which returns results like images, videos, and news, in addition to webpages—we’re helping you find all different kinds of information in the same place. We’ve continued to make search more comprehensive, enabling you to find products, places, patents, books, maps and more.
  • Quick Answers: Today on Google you’ll find more than just a list of links to websites. You’ll find Quick Answers at the top of the page for a wide variety of topics, including flight times, sports scores, weather and dozens more. As our technology gets better, we’re beginning to answer harder questions for you, right on the search results page.
  • The Future of Search: We’ve also been focused on developing faster ways to search and save time, whether we’re shaving seconds off searches with Google Instant or helping you search from your phone with Voice Search. Searching should be as easy as thinking, and the future looks bright!

And what better than a timeline:

An eMarketing Textbook worth giving a read

by Chris M on November 2, 2011 in Equipment, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization with No comments

About a month ago I was invited to the launch party of Quirk’s 4th Edition eMarketing textbook. Now, I’ve been to parties at Quirk before and I’ve read a previous edition of the textbook, both of which were really great, so combine the two and what more could you expect? The party was awesome, despite arriving a little late, it was awesome meet Dianne, Lyndi, Jason and Abby, who are the geniuses behind the education department. I also managed to catch up with Rob Stokes who is the mastermind behind Quirk itself as well as the textbook.

The party was awesome, I had a really good time and was stoked to be given a free copy of Quirk’s eMarketing Textbook, which sees it’s 4th Edition now. Wow, the textbook’s doubled in size, jam-packed with online marketing information, tips, tricks and all sorts of other goodies. I haven’t had a chance to get through the whole book yet, but to give you an idea, it’s broken down into sections: Think, Create, Engage and Optimize.

Continue reading →

Is SEO spam?

by Chris M on October 24, 2011 in Search Engine Optimization with 2 Comments

A question I’ve actually been asked quite a few times and although it’s easy to answer, there’s a little more to it than meets the eye.

Today, Google’s head of spam, Matt Cutts, discusses whether Google thinks SEO is spam. It’s a great video and worth having a watch if you’re interested in SEO.

Enjoy:

Please leave a comment if you’re interested in discussing this topic.

Google turns on SSL, SEOs scream out!

by Chris M on October 20, 2011 in Search Engine Optimization with 16 Comments

Google has announced that it’s taking privacy more seriously and as of today, users who are logged into their accounts and performing searchings, will no longer have their searches recorded by Google Analytics. In other words, when a logged in users performs a search and clicks on your website, Analytics will no longer tell you what keyword the person searched for. DAMN!

In Analytics, it will still report the visitor as an organic visit, it just won’t drill down to what keyword was searched for before the click was made because this apparently goes against new privacy terms that Google is working on.

SEOs will still be able to see conversion rates, segmentations and such, so not everything’s being removed, but this is definitely a huge smack for all SEOs and website owners who like to see what people are searching for to arrive at their websites.

Inside Analytics you will start to notice “(not provided)” instead of the keywords, allowing you to see that the visitor was a Google logged in users performing a search and organically clicking through to your website.

Interestingly, Google reports that CPC visitors will still be tracked, so that’s a little contradicting isn’t it? I doubt it’ll take long for them to block that too.

I’m not really sure what this is going to mean to SEOs, but what I can tell you is that it’s going to be a punch to the stomach of note and I can only hope that Google will think about this really carefully and if they don’t undo it (which I doubt they will), then they need to come up with something else.

The SEO industry were up in arms over this and Google’s taken quite a smashing today. I must admit, since Google launched its new Analytics with that SEO tab, I can’t help but think that this is some form of data ownership.

What do you think?

Where do people look on search results?

by Chris M on October 7, 2011 in Search Engine Optimization with 2 Comments

I read a fantastic post over at SEOmoz yesterday, the sort of post that is technical in terms of SEO, but not too technical that a lot of people would struggle to understand, so I wanted to write about the post here because I found it fascinating and I’m sure a lot of you will appreciate this.

So as a quick intro, what’s eye-tracking? Eye-tracking is the process of studying where people’s eyes go when they look through the results Google provides when a search is performed. What I mean by this is once a person’s performed a search on Google, we want to know where the average person looks.

As you can imagine, for SEO this is highly important and it’s an area that is often overlooked. The most important part is understanding that Google is changing – we see the Google 8 Pack, we see YouTube videos in the results, we even see products from time to time and what this has done is change the way SEO is actually used – being ranked in position 1 isn’t the be all and end all, it’s ranking on Page 1 with the correct type of listing that brings the traffic. It’ll make more sense after you’ve looked at the screens below.

This case study looks at 5 different key phrases and shows the results accordingly.

First up is a search for “best pizza in Chicago”:

Next let’s look at something more generic like “pizza”

Now let’s look at something which returns videos, “how to make a pizza”

Let’s look at an image results search, “pizza cutters”

Finally, let’s look at a specific place, “Pizza Hut”

Quite amazing to see these results, there’s so much to this! Deciding if video’s might be a good idea for your business, whether you should focus more on a local business listing or rather optimize purely for position 1.

The game’s changing and if we don’t follow closely, we’ll fall behind.

Introducing Google Analytics Premium

by Chris M on September 29, 2011 in Blogging, Equipment, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization with 2 Comments

Google Analytics, for those who don’t know, is a free service provided by Google that allows website owners to view all sorts of information about the people who arrive at their website. From simple things such as what country the visitors come from to advanced formula’s for calculating social media traffic and conversions.

Today, Google has announced that they’ve launched a Google AdWords Premium account, which gives advanced users even more tools, support and access to more data (if that’s even possible!).

The main additions are:

1. Extra processing power
2. Advanced analysis
3. Service and Support
4. Gaurentees

The bad news is that the Premium accounts are only available to those in the United States, Canada and the UK, so us South Africans are going to have to wait a while still.

Here’s a video to bring you up to speed:

The SEO PIMP video

by Chris M on September 26, 2011 in Search Engine Optimization, Video with 3 Comments

I love SEO, I think everyone knows that by now, so when I see one of these SEO rap video’s, I’m quick to take a listen and have a laugh at the lyrics.

I came across this one, SEO PIMP, on Web AddiCT(s) and wanted to share it with all of you.

Have a laugh:

Priceless lyrics, as viewable in the comments.

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