SEO Blog - Internet Marketing News

The Google Webmaster Central blog yesterday posted about it’s new SEO Starter Guide, available for free PDF download.

This is excellent news for small business owners, especially during a recession, as many companies will be looking to push their search rankings/traffic forward but without the budget for SEO consulting.

“Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.”

There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there if you’re looking to learn SEO yourself from forums so the guide is great to provide a common-sense approach to understanding on-site search engine optimisation. It’s also good news for the search industry that Google are providing information like this. By educating webmasters about SEO best practices this will hopefully clear-up any false impressions or concerns some may have about the industry as a whole.

For more information there’s a write-up over on Search Engine Land.

I’ve been blogging for the last three years now and one of the most important things I’ve learnt is readers don’t have the time (or attention span) to read through long detailed posts. Concise, attractive looking posts grab the attention of readers and performs far more effectively almost every time.

I figured this out the hard way, spending hours writing up long posts which I perceived as quality content. Unfortunately no-one else agreed! Surprisingly the short and very quick posts which I didn’t think were anywhere near as interesting, seemed to grab the attention of readers, commenter’s and social media audiences.

5 reasons why you should forget about writing the perfect piece of quality content

Image Credit: Flickr

1) Ditch the long paragraphs - no-one reads them!
Is it worth describing point 1 in detail here? Chances are that readers will skim over the title and skip to point 2! So off to point 2…

2) A diagram paints a thousand words
An informative diagram will be quicker to understand and instantly provide an overview of the post. Additional content can be added to back-up the post for users who are looking for more detail, without the need for reading through everything for those who aren’t so interested.

3) A picture doesn’t even need to paint three words!
Images make the page look attractive and can be the difference between a StumbleUpon thumbs up or a user leaving the site before the browser even loads.

4) Spend your time researching a large number of bullet points instead of copywriting
As interesting as the post might be, if it looks long-winded it will probably get ignored. If you have a bullet-pointed list full of useful information or links, for example, users are likely to scan through each item and bookmark to finish later.

5) A boring headline = no-one reads your post
You might have thousands of website visitors or RSS subscribers, but no matter how good the post is, it’s likely to get skipped if the headline is dull. Put more of your copywriting effort into considering the headline and the reward should be far greater.

So there you have it, it’s simple - blogging’s all about headlines, lists & images! Maybe you should try it yourself, drop the hours of copywriting and watch the social media votes roll in!

Google have obviously been clamping down on paid links during the last year, but it now looks like they may also be taking a stance against blog reviews made in exchange for free gifts!

Just in case you haven’t heard of this; a recent popular strategy has been for website’s to offer a free gift in exchange for bloggers reviewing and linking to a product. This appeared to be treated differently from paid blog reviews with many people assuming this to be a tactic considered acceptable by Google.

One website which openly uses this tactic is SumoLounge.com, successfully generating hundreds of backlinks in exchange for a free product, often a sumo beanbag chair.

However, Google now appear to have stripped Sumo Lounge of their Google PageRank (notice the toolbar image below). No obvious ranking penalties have been applied and internal PageRank is still active, but this may act as a warning to website’s looking to offer a similar incentive to gain links from bloggers.

I can understand why Google would treat these type of reviews in the same way as a paid blog post, but it will almost certainly be very difficult to police. Google will need to ensure they only penalise websites where the sole intention of offering a free gift is in order to receive a product review backlink, otherwise how can they differentiate between this and a christmas gift?

So what do you do now?
I think it’s a fairly safe bet that if you rely heavily on one type of link building strategy (whether it’s via directories, articles or blog reviews) you’re likely to create a backlink profile which appears unnatural to the search engines. Having a widespread mix of different type of links is far more likely to have a positive influence towards search rankings. Although entirely speculative, it’s also possible that Google will be more lenient if paid links only account for a small percentage of overall backlinks, perhaps resulting in paid links being devalued instead of a ranking penalty applied.

Having been involved in a wide range of travel SEO projects during the last 12 months, I thought it would be a good time to write about the buying cycle of searches when purchasing a holiday online.

Photo credit: Flickr

Richard recently took a look at the most important aspects of travel PPC and below I have listed how we interpret the typical search behaviour of online travel customers when looking to purchase a holiday online:

• Get Holiday Ideas – At the initial stage the travel consumer has a reasonable idea about the type of holiday they are looking to go on, but will still be looking for inspiration. They will go straight to a search engine to find further information about the destinations they can visit to meet this requirement. They will try to identify the holiday via a series of searches such as “summer holiday 2009”, “beach holiday”, narrowing down towards the location with searches such as “beach holiday in Europe” etc.
• Destination Research – The type of results users will be looking for at these stage are generally travel guides, they have a budget in mind but the most important goal is to identify the location. Users will continue by performing informational searches such as “Climate in Greece”, “hurricane season in the Caribbean”, “best Mediterranean beach holidays in September”.
• Confirm Location – In order to find a suitable destination which meets the user’s needs they will perform queries such as “summer holiday in Italy”, “weekend in South of France”, “self-catering holiday in Tenerife” or “all-inclusive honeymoon to the Maldives”.  Once comparing multiple destinations a decision is made to confirm the destination. Next they are likely to research deeper into the more specific locations via various research and long-tail queries such as “beach holidays in the South of France”, “best location in the French Riviera”, “hotels in Nice”, “where to stay in Monaco” etc.
• Compare Packages & Transport Options –The next stage is to identify the preferred mode of transport, this will include various comparisons for flights, trains or driving. Users will look for a range of travel related queries such as “cheap flights to Nice” and “Eurostar to Nice” as well as considering holiday packages which include transport. These are still mainly research based queries, but the user now has a clear idea about where, when and how they want to go on holiday.
• Select Hotel – Ok, they’ve found a cheap flight to Nice, which is the best travel option so far, now time to find a hotel which matches up with this or perhaps a holiday package which combines both at a cheaper rate. Back off to Google searching for “hotels in Nice” this time. They will scan for the best option to find the most suitable hotel features/location and at the most reasonable price. Again more research, checking out the hotel review websites.
• Decision Time - Once they’ve read the reviews and found the perfect holiday, will they add this to a shopping basket and order like you would with any other e-commerce website? No, probably not. Some travel websites you may have to enquire to confirm pricing details and then book over the phone, others you can check for availability and book there and then. But instead they’ll probably think it over one last time, just to make sure.
• Revisit Website to Book - Ok, they’ve thought it through, decided it’s time to get away from the UK’s glorious grey summer skies, booked the dates off work and got their creditcard ready, great! So back to find the holiday previously selected. If they’re clever this would be saved as a bookmark, the problem is many people won’t have remembered to have done this and even if they did there’s a good chance it’s a dynamic URL which may no longer work. So instead you perform a brand query “Expedia” or “Expedia holidays to Nice”, for example. Eventually browsing to the correct listings and hopefully finding the price hasn’t shot up considerably!
• Purchase – They’ve reassured themselves (several times) this is the holiday package they want to purchase and they proceed to complete the transaction either online or over the phone.
• After Sales – The buying cycle will continue following the sale with customer service and support involved, hopefully with the opportunity for repeat business in the future. This means it’s important to ensure you dominate all brand queries, both paid and organic. Making sure that when potential customers are searching for your brand they only find you and the glowing reviews and PR you want them to, without a competitor in sight!

How does this affect your SEO strategy?
By now you should have a clearer understanding of a searchers needs and have a good idea of which stage of the buying cycle they are at for each specific search. But which type of users do you want to capture and at what stage?

Identify your audience and goals…
Firstly you must consider the market and type of users you are looking to attract to the site, Google provides the following travel search marketing tips to consider:

• What is the end objective for your business – transactions, branding, lead generation? Your approach may differ based on the decided outcome.

• Determine the success metric in advance. What cost per transaction is acceptable? What is your target gross/net ROI?
• Have a clearly defined target market or user in mind. Are you primarily interested in attracting leisure or business travelers and/or discount, mid-scale, or luxury travelers?

Research your keywords…
Google’s research showed that catching the user at an early stage of a buying cycle can still result in a sale 40% of the time. This is very interesting and creates a strong argument for capturing users early into their search for a holiday. However the main difference between targeting keywords for paid, as opposed to organic search, is the volume of keywords you can target. PPC allows you to have flexibility over the keywords which generate traffic and is very much about refining keyword selection and continually changing key targets based upon performance and seasonality.

With SEO you’re unlikely to get that luxury and have little margin for error when selecting keywords with high-conversion potential.  I would highly recommend using the pay-per-click data you have collected to help identify the top converting keywords. After all if six months after optimising for “When to go on holiday to Cancun” you finally generate enough clickthrough data to realise this has a 0.1% conversion rate, it’s then very difficult to re-adjust and target “luxury holidays in Cancun Mexico” instead.

Test, test and test again…
Despite targeting the early stages of the buying cycle proving to be more successful than expected, I would still recommend targeting more specific queries as this is more likely to generate targeted visits from users who have a clearer idea about what they are looking for. For example, someone searching for a “long-weekend city break in New York” is more likely to complete a sale than a user performing an informational query such as “places to visit in New York”. At this stage the user is also likely to be narrowing down the number of websites they are looking to shortlist for completing a sale, so the competition should be fewer than a more generic search.

However, if you have a strong website which can rank highly for more competitive and popular search queries it may be worth targeting information keyword phrases, a lower conversion rate is likely but this may be outweighed by the increased search volume. You should also consider the search volumes and conversion rates of plural and singular versions of keywords before selecting which to target.

You must also remember all travel websites are different and will not have the same conversion rates, for example, “all-inclusive honeymoons” may be a high-converting keyword for a honeymoon specialist but not so successful for a general website offering the same package. While an average e-commerce transaction will take a few days, it can take 2-3 months in many cases for an online holiday sale to be completed and users will revisit the website by multiple channels and keyword searches, this means you need to test and track user activity over a longer period of time to ensure that you value the importance of a traffic source or keyword leading to a sale.

Now you are ready to begin your SEO campaign…
In summary, to find the best keywords you need to consider both the conversion rates and search volumes in order to estimate the overall value of referred converted sales. Search engine optimisation is a long-term process, so the effort put into evaluating the quality and cost-effectiveness of keywords via paid search is incredibly important to ensure you’re targeting the most valuable traffic sources as a business.

Once the top-keywords have been identified, then it’s time to optimise and push towards achieving the high search rankings. Then you can take a holiday of your own to sit back and relax, whilst enjoying the 56% clickthrough rates which are only possible via the top organic listings!

I’ve noticed this on Google a few times recently, but when forum listings appear in organic search results they have a post count, number of authors and last post date stamp alongside them:

For example, try this search for .htaccess subdomain redirect:

Google only rolled this out a couple of weeks ago, but I’m already finding it very useful quickly to filter out the one post forum results and instead being able to pick out threads containing more substantial information, without the need for clicking each listing.

From an SEO perspective it’s also likely to influence clickthrough rates, so popular forum communities may be rewarded with additional search engine traffic.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, infact it’s probably quite useful as Wikipedia will provide a different type of search result, but the number of locational searches where Wikipedia rank in Google’s top 10 is quite incredible!

Here’s some I found by performing a range of queries for countries, cities, counties and states:

• UK
• USA
• France
• China
• Australia
• Italy
• Paris
• Rome
• Venice
• Amsterdam
• Brisbane
• Sydney
• Melbourne
• South Africa
• Cape Town
• Egypt
• Luxor
• Cairo
• New York
• Los Angeles
• California
• Florida
• Orlando
• Seattle
• Spain
• Madrid
• Barcelona
• London
• Oxford
• Oxfordshire
• Manchester
• Edinburgh
• Dublin

Ok, you get the point - all of these were listed in Google UK’s top 10 and most of these were infact top 3. Wikipedia’s domination in Google has caused some interesting debates in the past, but I’m quite surprised they dominate for so many of these terms. In my opinion travel guides such as Lonely Planet would be just as (and in many cases more) relevant for searches like this, yet they only appear for a handful of these queries.

So can you find any locations which Wikipedia doesn’t rank for?

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been moving into a new apartment and I had a problem getting the oven to work (not too good at these sort of things). Anyway, I didn’t have a manual so I headed over to the manufacturers website, Creda, for help.

Searching for Creda in Google I found www.creda.co.uk at #1, but was surprised to see the following result snippet displayed:

Bit strange, but I guessed the website was down the last time Googlebot visited and continued to click the listing and then found this message to show that the website only operates in Internet Explorer!

So rather than having the search engines fully index all content and generate traffic from valuable product related terms, the spiders find an error page which can compete for the not so relevant keyphrase “Browser Error” instead!

I later found they have another website which is browser compatible, far more useful for non IE users and the search engines this time. Although seeing that they are now owned by Hotpoint and the old version (and it’s duplicate Creda.com) rank organically they’re probably in need of a 301 redirect or three too.

But back to my main point and there’s a big lesson to be learnt for any designers who are stuck in the past and aren’t testing websites on multiple browsers. Although on a more positive note, I fixed the oven!

Earlier today I wrote a blog post over on e-consultancy which looks at how UK supermarkets are ignoring SEO for major keywords, most notably “supermarket”.

In my opinion this is a massive oversight and it appears that the leading supermarket retailers such as Asda, Sainsburys and to a certain extent Tesco are trying to overprotect their brand rather than optimise their website’s for very important keywords.

As outlined in the article, I’m not suggesting that they keyword stuff their h1 and title tags etc. But by emphasising terms such as “supermarket” they are clearly describing the website to users/customers and helping to generate very valuable targeted search engine traffic.

What do you think, are the supermarkets missing a trick when it comes to SEO?

Following XL Airways going into administration last week and yesterday’s announcement that Lehman Brothers are filing for bankruptcy, many competitors have quickly setup PPC ads targeting brand queries to take advantage of this.

Below are the ads appearing on Google for XL and ads have quickly started appearing today for Lehman Brothers as well:

This obviously wouldn’t have been possible before Google opened up brand bidding, but is this a good thing? Personally I’m quite impressed with how quickly competitors have acted and surely for people searching for alternative flights to XL this has to be useful.

Twitter have today removed all link juice from profile bio links and it’s fair to say this hasn’t gone down too well in the SEO industry.

The move follows Dave Naylor’s backlink tip which caused Matt Cutts to notify Twitter founder Evan Williams, appearing to recommend that hyperlinks are removed from profile bio pages.

As I wrote earlier in the week Twitter has become a very important tool in the search industry, and this began to cause controversy because many active users feel that the time and effort they have spent in building up their Twitter profiles should be rewarded with a backlink to promote their own websites.

This tweet from Sugarrae helps to show the general feeling people have about why bio links should be valued by Google:

With a good point made by Graywolf:

And another valid opinion from Rishil:

I would agree with all of the above statements and in my opinion Twitter could learn a great deal from the way Sphinn and SEOmoz reward the active members in the community. Sphinn nofollow all submission links until they hit the homepage and SEOmoz nofollow profile links until you reach 100+ user points.

What do you think, is this wrongly punishing legitimate Twitter users or is this necessary to stop spammers? And, if Google have contributed with advice about how these links are valued, should they be recommending this?