Another superb session from Pubcon Vegas, dealing ensuring your strategy for Google reputation is high on the agenda when it comes to search engine optimisation. The session started with Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim, with specific information on how to test your site for your brand name as a keyword. Lets be honest, you should be ranked number 1 for your brand name, unless your brand name is the same as a bigger company. We normally work on ranking ourselves for search terms, but we must now understand that Google looks for sites with good reputation and will use all information available to ascertain a value, so part of the process to to ensure Google does not see anything bad about your site.

By using a simple spread sheet and measuring all top 20 results we will then aim to fill as many of the those 20 places as possible, using secondary owned sites, social media sites and ideally third party sites. Sub domains are treat as a separate domain, so it is possible to use sub domains to enhance the brand name within.

This followed by Tony Wright CEO WrightIMC, who talked about managing reviews sites out there. Negative content on review sites can damage your reputation on Google, especially in within Google controlled sites, such as Google maps. So thinking a head and avoiding bad comments, as well contact customers and asking them to reverse comments, can be  beneficial to your business on the web. It fits in well with customer service anyway.

Often Google is referred to as online real estate, their homepage being deemed as the most valuable in the world. The same reasoning works well with each individual search term, with the first page of Google being the most lucrative peace of online real estate you can own. Unlike the real world of property through where just about all property has a value, only a few websites actually have any online real estate value. This is because there are only 10 places on the first page of Google and once you get past the third of fourth page, there is almost no value at all. In fact if you are position 50 for a search term, then you might as well be position 450.

There are many sets of stats out there, but a sample is that only 18% of people will venture to the second page of a search and only 5% will venture to the third page. In terms of business return, if you are not on the first page of Google for the correct search terms, your return from your online investment will be small if anything at all.

We mention Google in this scenario, based on the fact that it pretty much dominates the UK search results, with over 90% of all searches going through the big G. Bing, Yahoo and Ask make up the rest, with other offerings not even touching and results scale. The massage has to clear, there are no half measures with online marketing or search engine optimisation, you just have to be on the first page of Google.

In business you normally expect to get a guaranteed service for an agreed price, unfortunately is not as simple as that with SEO. So for this newsletter I want to give some reasons why no one can promise a number one spot, even though number one is the goal you are constantly aiming for.

In a nutshell the answer is this:

There Are Too Many Uncontrollables In Search Engine Optimisation

Here Are 2 Examples Of Things That I And No One Else Has Control Of:

1/ You Are Playing In An Ever-Changing Playing Field. Nothing Stays Still.

It is not just what you do to your website, but what others are doing to theirs. As you are constantly trying to improve your results, so are all the other websites around you.
Even the websites, who you have a relationship with and link to you, can affect your rankings. If they change their website, say by adding different content or doing something wrong, it can affect the link value back to your website and affect your rankings also. Many of my sites have thousands of links from hundreds of websites linking to me. If any of these change what they are doing, this could affect my rankings.

2/ We Have No Control Over Search Engine Algorithms

An algorithm is just an equation that calculates where certain websites should rank for certain search terms and is different for every search engine. No one knows exactly what the algorithms are, but we can have an educated guess of many of the factors through trial and error. These algorithms can be and are changed in a heartbeat, if that particular search engine decides it wants to refine its search results. There are no warnings; there is no notice of change, we have no control, we do not even have a legal right to be included in their rankings at all should we complain.

Search engines change these algorithms to suit the millions of pages of information added to the Internet everyday and to combat spamming techniques and improve results. Again this may not have a direct affect on your website, but it may affect the websites linking to you which may have an indirect affect, losing you rankings. (Or improving).

The good news is that the opposite is also true, for every website that loses ranking another must improve. So at every algorithm change there are losers and winners, but I would never guarantee which is which beforehand. What I do know is this. Quick win tactics never last through change. Only clean quality search engine optimisation techniques have the best chance of surviving change or improving though change.

There are many more examples but too much to write in one newsletter. Just remember this, if you want a guaranteed natural search engine place on Google then you must first own Google.

So if anyone guarantees you a top place then ask him or her. “Do YOU own Google?” and if the answer is no, you know what to do.

Some Search Engine Optimisation Advice To Get You Going.

You Must Know Your Search Terms

It is not about optimisation your website for you business name (unless it is a popular brand name), it is about optimising for the search terms that your potential customers are looking for. Before I even start making a website I research the search terms to ensure my page names are named after them.

Knowing what search terms are the most popular and ensuring your pages (notice I said pages not homepage of website) will give you the most traffic. Make sure they are optimised by writing unique quality content on that subject including those search terms within this content, this will give you the best start. Never copy and paste anything.

You should only write content on one page for a maximum of 3 search terms, 2 is better and 1 search term is ideal.

So if you have 30-search terms for your business that you know will bring in traffic, you need at least 10 pages (3 search terms each) but ideally 30 pages of content, i.e. 1 page of content per search term.

Big Mistakes For Search Engine Optimisation

You can see from the above that not many 6-page websites will now ever deliver a high amount of traffic for competitive search terms, yet most new websites consist of just that, 6 pages. For example: 1, home page, 2, about us page, 3, services or products page, 4, contact page, 5, privacy page and 6, sitemap.

So if this business has 30 search terms it wants to be high for, then it should have ideally 36 pages. The more search terms you learn and the more pages you write the more unique doorways you have to let your customers in. It is a bit like having several shops down a high street rather than just one all belonging to the same company.

Every day I see businesses asking for quotes for 6 page websites. Unless they have a separate marketing budget that will send visitors to their website through other marketing channels, they are wasting their money. Why have a website if it is never seen? What I find worse is so called professionals advising a client that is all they need. Of course there are always the clients who even after good professional advice will opt for a cheap option rather than the one that will give a return on their investment. A website is not just a website. It is a silent marketing machine that will deliver you customers and more profits if done correctly, but a waste of money if not.

How Do I Find My Search Terms?

You can buy software to find these search terms, (do a search on Google, no advertising products here) but you can also get a few free terms a day from wordtracker.com. You would multiply this figure by around 10 to get the full amount of searches over all the search engines.

That’s it for now.