Resisting the Temptation to Spam your SEO
Posted by Marketing_UK in Google, SEO Spam, SEO Training on January 4, 2012
Spamming your SEO activities or using illicit SEO tactics is always a temptation. Almost every time you check the rankings for priority keywords you will see spammy entries in the rankings. A check through competitor links will often reveal hundreds of spammy links from websites with irrelevant content. The most interesting news is that even Google has succumbed to the temptation to use spammy links to boost its standing in the rankings. In this particular case it is to boost the rankings of Google Chrome.
Using links to boost rankings is the essence of SEO in competitive markets. However, it appears that an agency working for Google has been in breach of Google’s own webmaster guidelines. The agency had placed more than 400 sponsored articles and blog posts and used them to manipulate the PageRank for the Google Chrome browser.
Using sponsored articles is not a problem. It is when you utilise anchor text to boost rankings artificially. Under Google’s guidelines the sponsored links should have been no followed. This would mean that the link would generate visitor traffic but not pass PageRank to the target page. In response to the uproar in the SEO industry, Google appear to have penalised the Google Chrome page and it no longer appears for the term “browser”.
Our to SEO and SEO training is that illicit techniques should be resisted, regardless of the temptations. I have spotted a the demise of a site in B2B market that has dramatically fallen away over recent months. When the site was riding high in the rankings a client in the same market wanted me to emulate the practises of the site in question. This approach was resisted at the time. And the results speak for themselves.
Marketing from a Procurement Perspective
Posted by Marketing_UK in Buyer Knowledge on June 28, 2011
I recently had the opportunity to undertake some training or a procurement consultancy. During the two days I was exposed to a wide range of their procurement training materials. It was interesting that some much of the material provided additional insights for someone taking the perspective of a marketing or sales person. In essence, the procurement training was aiming to teach purchasing professionals to be better at their job. It seemed to me that in order to do that the person playing the role of anybody in buying and selling would perform better if they understood the viewpoint, objectives and agenda of the person they were transacting with. This approach meant that the sales person would get to understand the needs of the buying manager and vice versa.
Much of the procurement consultancy’s training was about gaining expertise in a modern strategic sourcing environment. The more sophisticated and expert the sales operation of the vendor organisation, the strategic and sophisticated the buying organisation. Otherwise there will be a mis-match in the comnpetencies of the two organisations. The language of the contemporary procurement organisation includes the following skills:
- Category Management
- Cost Reduction
- Negotiation
- eSourcing
- Supplier Relationship Management
- Supplier Performance Improvement
- Managing Effective Tenders
This list of critical skills is equally required by the successful sales organisation. There is more to effective procurement than just lowering the buying price. Effective procurement and supplier relationships is about improving the competitive advantage of an organisation in both the short and long-term.
Writing For The Web – Checklist
Posted by Marketing_UK in Content, Design on June 5, 2011
I attended a course on writing for the web over the weekend. The training course was organised under the auspices of the Chartered Institute of Marketing or CIM. The course was held at Bedfordshire University and attended by approximately 30 delegates. The content of the course was based around a checklist of 10 key questions.
- Who are we writing for?
- What do our readers want to know?
- What is outline tone of voice?
- How good is our user-interface text?
- Do we write for the way people write online?
- Does our website use a consistent style of formatting?
- Do we understand our news audiences?
- Is our content engine search engine friendly?
- Do we know where to put our keywords?
- What can we do next week to improve our online content?
In essence each question led to a 10 minute discussion surrounding the theory and practice of different aspects of website content. In most cases actual examples of good and bad practise were shown. The course also involved a two exercises where delegates were asked to work in small teams to improve the presentation and understanding of website content.
Data for SEO
Posted by Marketing_UK in Web Analytics Training on January 11, 2011
It is often discussed whether search engine optimisation is an art or science. The early SEO practitioners often shrouded their work in mystery. Implying, very often, that they had restricted access to some form of hidden knowledge. That this hidden knowledge could not be learned by ordinary marketing mortals. Today, although expertise is highly prized, most of the core components can be delineated and learned.
Today SEO is highly data reliant and high levels of numeracy are required. Keyword research and selection requires the analysis of large amounts of data. That data is increasingly complex. Likewise, web analytics requires a high level of competency in managing the ever increasing amounts of data available. A client website I manage generated traffic from 14,000 organic keywords and 19,000 paid search terms during the month of December.
In the past it was always a question of needing more data. Today it is a question of making sure that the data you investigate is relevant to the objectives of the search marketing campaign.
Web Analytics Workshop and Training Course
Posted by Marketing_UK in Google, Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Web Analytics Training on October 26, 2010
The level of enquiries regarding web analytics has increased over recent months. My guess is that this is driven by two key dynamics.
Firstly, there is an increased demand on the part of marketing departments and marketing agencies to justify their expenditure budgets. Online marketing budgets are growing and online marketers have made great claims regarding the trackability and measurability of online spend and activity. Having convinced their boards to invest vast sums in Google Adwords and expensive new resources into social media, marketing directors are confronted with the need to provide proof that their shiny new marketing strategies are delivering a return on expenditure.
The second key dynamic is one purely of complexity. Online marketing has become more complex. As I have mentioned elsewhere, this complexity is particularly effecting Google Adwords. But with the online marketing mix fragmenting into a wider range of tools the people that control the budgets, the marketing directors themselves, need to know what is is working and what isn’t.
Google Adwords has introduced a new report generating system. This reporting system appears much more complex to manage than the old system. And I believe that in many cases, the people managing the PPC accounts on a daily basis may not be the same people as those who may have set up many of the reports and measures that may be embedded in their current Google Adwords and Google Analytics accounts.
I look at many analytics and Adwords projects where the conversion links no longer function. Or the e-commerce data in Google Analytics is incomplete. Most accounts just need a tidy up. Others have analytics and Adwords links and code that refer to old URLs that no longer exist.
Anyhow. To satisfy the perceived new demand we have come up with a new web analytics training course and workshop. This aims to take both a theoretical and practical look at web analytics (the training course element) combined with a thorough web analytics workshop where delegates present their actual tracking and measurement problems. These problems will be worked through to a solution. Or if too difficult to a position where an action plan is draw up that should ultimately lead to a successful outcome. Prices for the workshop start at £695 for a single delegate. It is anticipated that groups up to 5 or 6 can be accommodated.
The Balance Between Web Analytics, SEO and Website Design
Posted by Marketing_UK in Design, Google Analytics, SEO Training, Web Analytics Training, Website Performance on September 23, 2010
I was at a business network meeting yesterday. I spoke to many small and medium-sized business owners that had websites. I was struck by two things. Firstly, the proportion of the business owners that were either in the process of redesigning their website or were of the belief that they needed a redesign. In many cases these website owners were prepared to pay anything from £3,000 to £30,000 for a new website design.
The second thing that struck me was that most of these business owners had arrived at a conclusion that their website didn’t work without access to or study of any objective data. Generally this data is referred to as web analytics. The business owners were relying purely on sales feedback or a gut feel that things weren’t working.
At the simplest level you cannot tell why your website isn’t working if you haven’t analysed its performance. Once you have access to the data you can work out whether the problem is one of traffic, that is unique visitors, or conversion, that is the proportion of visitors that carry out some form of positive action once they visit your website.
Google Analytics and Statcounter are just two free/low cost analytics programmes that can yield a massive amount of high quality information about your website performance. In both cases, these analytics programmes should yield the information that forms the basis of an SEO programme.
How many visitors, where they come from and how they behave on your website are the three key pieces of information that web analytics provides. Once you have this information you can decide what to do with your SEO programme. To decide to redesign website and incur further costs without this information is foolhardy.
Link Building in the New Environment
Posted by Marketing_UK in Google, Link building, Social Media on September 1, 2010
Link building is a core component of SEO. Inbound links, that is links directed to a target website that you own or need to improve rankings for, is the most important aspect of Google PageRank. It is also important component of the Bing algorithm. Training for link building is therefore a core component of SEO training. A key issue to address with link building is the level of time and resource that should be allocated to proactively boosting your inbound link base. Link building is a time consuming process, so targeting your activity is crucial.
There are various methods of link building.
- Join a link partnership scheme
- Submit your website to a range of paid and free directories
- Join some forums and submit and participate in threads that allow signature links
- Submit articles to article distribution services
- Rely on requests for reciprocal or three way links
- Book mark your website on a range of bookmarking services
- Link bait – That is write content that is controversial or revelatory
- Just write good content that attracts links
- Buy links from a link wholesaler such as Text Links or Smart Traffic
- Create a portfolio of blogs that interlink via a link wheel or link web
There is no silver bullet and no individual approach is sufficient on its own within a competitive market category . The key is to create a portfolio of links that encompasses a range of sources with a blend of specifically targeted and semantically related anchor text keyword terms.
Sharing your time effort and resource is crucial. Buying links is specifically forbidden by Google’s webmaster guidelines. And our approach is to avoid paying for links at all costs. However, if you are in market category where most of the top ranking websites are supported by paid links you will find it difficult to compete by relying on free links alone. However, beware of the risks and overtly buying links may well bring you to the attention of Google and ultimately lead to a ranking penalty.
You will notice that no mention of social media has been made. This is because most of the major social media websites; Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn do not pass PageRank. Any rankings obtained via social media will be a feature in the news or real time section of the Google search results and will be very temporary.
Link building should be seen as a continuous and long term process. Do not expect immediate results but you should see gradual improvement in your rankings.
SEO Training
Posted by Marketing_UK in General Training, PPC Training, SEO Training, Web Analytics Training on August 6, 2010
I train clients in the use and development of SEO, web analytics and PPC management. It’s a fast moving business, dominated by the developments and innovations of Google.
The nature of search marketing is maturing, becoming vastly more commercially focused. There is a growing recognition that rankings, and even the website visitor traffic generated, are not sufficient on their own to improve the competitive advantage and profitability of a business. A knowledge of the potential customer and website visitor is also required.
Conversion, the achievement of an visitor action that has a value, is the main aim of most website interactions. Conversion takes place in the mind of the user, not on the website. Analytics merely models this reality. Modelling conversion is a mathematical process. But achieving successful conversions at an effective level requires creativity and visitor empathy.
As marketing professionals we are all in a continuous learning process. Customers change, the technology changes and the products and services we sell also change. The rewards for good work are worthwhile but the demands on our are greater. SEO training is like this but more so. The speed and magnitude of change is greater and consequences of failing to adapt more severe.
