Category: Search Engine Optimisation

Does Google Conduct Minor Toolbar PageRank Updates Between Major Updates?

Summit Online Marketing are asking the question most people who participate in search forums ask themselves. Does Google, on occasion, update the toolbar PageRank score of a particular web site between the major and mass toolbar PageRank updates that are reported?

As an SEO company, why do we ask this question? Well, if you visit enough blogs and forums, you are bound to see a thread or five with the title, “PageRank Update.” These threads are fairly noticeable and we find spot them on a fairly recent basis.

Real Webmasters involved in SEO outsourcing are noticing updates to their PageRank scores in the Google Toolbar. This happens all the time, and then they jump to the forums to be the first to announce the next PageRank update. But then you see a mass response of replies saying, “no PR update here.”

So is it possible that what that SEO Webmasters have noticed was a true toolbar PageRank update for his site? Maybe. There are a few possibilities, the most likely is that he or she is hitting a different data center with different PageRank scores. But I would not rule it out that Google does push minor PageRank scores to the toolbar between major updates.

More content… really?

Content. At SEO Liverpool we’ve noticed this buzzword in the SEO space has grown to astronomical levels. As I speak with companies on a regular basis, they constantly tell me that they’ve been advised by an online marketing company to write new and unique content by the boatload — no matter the Web site or space they’re in.

It’s time we review the advantages of content, and where it may be applicable. Let’s look at a few sites that will either need heavy amounts of content or little to no content.

These sites need content:

* Affiliate sites, which typically add little to no value by simply copying from others. These sites need a specific value-add, to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack.

* Sites with heavy amounts of graphics, Flash, video, or any other site that may be difficult for a user requiring a screen-reading program to view.

* E-commerce sites that use a set amount of content from a massive distributor, like Ingram Micro or Tech Data. Each merchant has access to the exact same data — what makes your site different from the rest?

These sites don’t need heavy amounts of SEO-specific content:

* Sites with a large community of content contributors who spend a good portion of their time writing about the topics surrounding the subject matter of each site.

* Sites that generate content on a regular basis, such as news sites or blogs.

Instead of trying to manipulate search engines, consider providing a way for your users, distributors and/or manufacturers to give you unique and well-written content. It’s likely that they have written marketing materials that won’t make it to their standard (and usually expensive) forms of distribution. This content could add a great deal of value to products and/or services that may be offered by many other online dealers with either the same or slightly different data.

When creating content to enhance search engine placement, keep in mind that it can come in multiple forms — services, contests, games, video, and even news . It’s critical that the content is interesting and compelling, so it has the chance of being linked to by a “fan.”

It’s very important that if you offer a special guarantee, such as a price match, you honor it to any possible level. By having complicated terms that make it nearly impossible to use… you’ll wind up upsetting your client base. While you may get links to your site, it will hurt your reputation.

It’s also extremely important to have a “yes we can help” customer service attitude. Your loyal customers can be solicited to come back and write about their experience. This most important feature has helped companies such as eBay and Amazon.

The retail sector, some stores have lost this attitude. In many cases, no matter how small the request, they just say no. You wind up spending an enormous amount of time arguing with them that you’re right.

However, if you buy the same product at a sites like ASOS, with their very friendly customer service attitude, you’ll be satisfied through the entire process and come back to buy more.

Tips for finding Niche Keywords Part 3

The final part in our post from Summit online marketing looking… the top seo guide to finding niche keywords

4. Did you know that there are differences between the written word and spoken dialogue? Try exploring natural sounding “dialogue” and words based on dialogue. Your friends and customers often will say things, that give you a starting place to explore new data.

5. Open up your research and explore the world of colour. For example, what happens if you enter a single term representing a colour like “red,” or “aqua” or “green” or any other colour?

6. Explore any type of data at all in terms of a root word. Don’t forget to explore everything and anything that comes to mind. From a topic you notice on the news, to something that may not even be a word at all. What happens if you try to explore a number, or a price like £9.95 instead of a word?

7. Instead of just thinking of your research as “keywords” try thinking in terms of your audience’s “topics of interest.”

Wordtracker will give you absolutely AMAZING detail if you take time to think about it laterally, and outside of the context of just a “keyword hunt.” Don’t let the natural tendency to “guess at keywords” stop you from uncovering all the hidden evidence, that just needs a little digging to find.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, if you want more ideas you can visit Wordtracker and have a go for free!

Michael Campbell Notes: Anybody involved with online marketing consulting would think about your audience’s trade lingo, industry jargon, and words that are specific to a certain holiday, sport, hobby or service. For example, RIP, stripper, loupe, masking, pantone, dot gain and super black are all related to the printing industry. Spend some time in the industry association sites or read industry specific magazines to learn their lingo, for more potential niches.

Another tip is to use verbs and action words like “stop” or “improve” as your root word. Then let the keyword service (my favourite is NicheBot) tell you what people want “stopped” or “improved” in their lives.

Tips for finding Niche Keywords Part 2

More on keyword research

With my first tip, I’m going to use an American example (It’s still more than relevant for the UK and European search marketer)… it was a quick sample page I’ve taken from a previous client.

1. If you are a Realtor, instead of using an obvious “logical phrase” like “real estate” (with 323 million competing pages on Google), or using a keyword acronym such as MLS (over 40 million competing pages on Google.) Try a researching a single “root word” term like “listing” just all by itself, leaving Wordtracker to do the hard part. Here are a few examples – each with under 1000 competing pages – which I grabbed in under 3 minutes of Wordtracker research:

* “house listings parry sound” – 90 competing pages for this exact phrase.
* “Wyoming MN home listings” – 197 competing pages for this exact phrase.
* “michigan real estate listing” – 197 competing pages for this exact phrase.
* “Wisconsin Home listings” – 697 competing pages for this exact phrase.
* “Central Virginia land listings” – 95 competing pages for this exact phrase.
* “north oaks minnesota home listings” – 233 competing pages for this exact phrase.

2. If you are an affiliate marketer, avoid researching the exact product that you want to promote. For example “candlestick holders.” Try using a single word like “holder” to determine exactly what type of “holders” are in highest demand with lowest competition. You may discover many other products – that you hadn’t thought of – with better windows of opportunity. Here are a few examples using the root word “holder.” Each phrase has under 10 competing pages. My research time, a mere 90 seconds –

* “motorcycle wheel holders” – KEI 676.0 – Competing pages on Google – 1
* ” southwest pot holders” – KEI 768.0 – Competing pages on Google – 3
* “hanging vine holder” – KEI 924.5 – Competing pages on Google – 2
* ” folbe fishing rod holder” – KEI 1156.0 – Competing pages on Google – 9
* “.30 Remington shell holder” – KEI 1444.0 – Competing pages on Google – 1

3. Try working with descriptive verbs, instead of researching a specific product. Using comprehensive search, try researching words like “new” or “old” or “rare” or “limited” or “reconditioned” or “polished” or “bronzed” or whatever. Use any type of descriptive terms to explore all kinds of interesting data.

Tune in for the final post

Tips for finding Niche Keywords Part 1

These days, most search engine marketing companies have access to all the common research tools. For this post we’ll explore one of my all-time favourites, Wordtracker (You should all know the link). Let’s start with a short intro, and talk about solving some common keyword research problems. Then I’ll share some quick and easy “how to” tips that will help you find a profitable niche.

A few years ago, I wrote an post about Wordtracker. After publishing the post, I had the privilege of dealing directly with Wordtracker support, and answering all sorts of keyword related questions. I spent months teaching companies how to tap into keyword phrases, trends and niches. But the real treasure I discovered, is that many customers were not finding the best keywords, because of the natural tendency to “guess” at keywords, rather than open up and fully explore the existing data, to reveal a wealth of information along the way.

First tip: Stop guessing about keyword phrases that people “might” be entering into the search box.

One of the biggest hurdles is trying to “dictate to the data, which keywords that you ***THINK*** are most relevant, instead of letting the Wordtracker system reveal the best information to you. Look at it this way… if you think in the identical fashion that everyone else thinks – by relying on keywords that are already lodged in your mind based upon your experiences – then the more you will be thinking like the rest of your competition. The more we rely on our thinking process for keywords that “make the most sense” to our brains, the more we tend to discover exactly the same keywords, that the rest of the world is discovering and targeting. That’s why it’s easy to get disappointed and feel like there are no untapped niche phrases available. In this mindset, we find only limited results based on logical guess work. What this usually means is… huge numbers of competing pages, all trying to rank for deadly dull, obvious phrases.

You can build your SEO skills to compete in highly competitive phrases – and you can win the game too – but that’s not the point. A much wiser approach is to learn how to “think differently” and explore the data that 99% of the competition never will see or find. When you research single keywords using Wordtracker’s powerful comprehensive search functionality, you will discover multiple instances of how a specific word is being used within different phrases, but without any guess work at all. Try working with a single, action related “root word.” Now listen carefully. Your root word does not have to be a word that your logical thinking dictates. For example… what happens if you research a term in its most generic form, and let Wordtracker piece together HOW that word is being used. This is one of the rare times when using human brilliance – or natural logic – can actually prevent you from seeing the most powerful truths.

The next post will give you a few creative examples to get you started…

Banners for (SEM Dummies) Part 2

Basics: What is a Third-Party Ad Server?

In the beginning of display advertising over a decade ago, advertisers sent in their banners in the same way traditional marketers traffic ads to magazines or television stations. Publishing sites would “paste” these ads up and then deliver post campaign results. There were some obvious inefficiencies in this method. As the technologies and methodologies evolved, advertisers could send in “tags,” which aren’t actual ads, but rather “placeholders” which would pull these ads from the advertisers’ own tool call the third party ad server. This is a superior adaptation as now advertisers get real time data of their ads, can serve targeted adseach time the tag is pulled by the publisher, and can perform many other vital operations.

Here are some of the basic features that most third party ad servers can bring to a display campaign and now can be used for Content Campaigns in Google (via certified tools):

Rules: When a banner tag is “pulled” by a publisher site to load on a page, the third party ad server is passed limited anonymous user data such as the location of the user’s IP address, what language their browser is set for, whether they’re using a Mac or PC, etc. Rules can be set to send the appropriate creative every time. So, for example, you can serve a Spanish ad to Spanish speakers. You can also send a user in Liverpool a specialised ad vs. a user in Manchester. This higher relevancy generally increases CTRs and conversion rates.

Frequency capping/storyboarding: Not only is anonymous user data passed in milliseconds to the ad server, but also user cookie info. Using this information, the ad server knows if this user has seen your ad before and how many times. Over time, you can develop a strategy to frequency cap and not show anymore to users who don’t click your ads (thereby not wasting CPM purchased impressions). As well, you can storyboard, which means you can start serving different ads to users based on how many times they’ve already been exposed. So, for example, you could have general creative out there (example: “10% off), and then, if the ad server detects a user who hasn’t clicked after seeing your ad five times, you can start serving an ad with a stronger message (example: “25% off if you act now”) and so on.

Reach and frequency reporting: Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads. This is important in understanding how users are interacting with your ads and finding the ‘sweet spot’ to just how many ads you need to buy in order to get your message out to a good percentage of your target audience. As well, a Reach report may show you that buying on football Website A may not be needed because a high percentage of the same users are being exposed to your ads on Football Website B, which you are purchasing at a much lower rate.

View-through conversions: As stated above, once a user is served an ad, they are cookied. So, unlike search, if a user converts after seeing your ad (but not clicking an ad), you will have that insight. This is huge because you’re lucky to get more than a .3% or .4% CTR on your ads…that means if you run 1,000,000 impressions, you may only get 3,000 clicks. However, the other 996,000 ads do have an effect in the marketplace and you can measure that when those users come back and convert.

All of these features may not be immediately available to advertisers. However, Google Content is one of the largest (if not the largest) ad network in terms of volume and these tools are going to help you get the most out of them.

Totally Unrelated Free Tool: HTML That Every Online Marketer Should Know

Tired of “viewing source” of an HTML page and thinking it looks more like ancient Greek than a real language? Online marketers are always checking out web pages to see if their tracking tags are there, checking navigation/link structure, reading competitor metatags for keyword ideas, etc. Understanding HTML is a good skill to have.

Check out Dave’s HTML Interactive Tutorial for Beginners (find it using Google Instant). Sure, there’s a ton of spamvertising, but I’ve literally sent dozens of folks there and they’ve all come out the other end of the seventeen mini-chapter tutorial with a good HTML foundation. Check it out!

Advanced Business to Business Marketing

This week at SEO Liverpool we’ve had a discussion this about how best to leverage b2b marketing. Have a look at our tips.

10 Tips for business-2-business marketing

1. Reach prospects early in the buying cycle
2. Advertise in “the tail”
3. Include non banded keywords
4. Pre qualify clickers
5. Focus and align ad copy
6. Create very specific landing pages and microsites
7. Test pages continuously
8. Offer multiple action options
9. Simplify registration forms
10. Turn web inquiries into sales leads

Advertising in the tail

Example is software: the tail would go to software…. enterprise software… business enterprise software and so on

Include non banded keywords

  1. Use adcopy to pre-qualify clickers
  2. Address your specific target audience

Pre qualify clickers

  1. Align ad copy with search query
  2. Modify copy across buying cycle
  3. laptop computer -> laptop information -> laptop user reviews -> ibm laptop models -> ibm thinkpad t61

Microsite

  1. Typically between 3-10 pages.
  2. Focused on a solution or client type.
  3. It eliminates the political stuff that comes with changing a corporate website

Test page elements – landing page testing

  1. Run a/b or multivariate constantly on microsites.
  2. Pick items to test.
  3. Page layout.
  4. Action triggers.
  5. Images.

Registration form placement.

  1. Names and descriptions of downloadable assets
  2. Registration form fields

Track & improve results

  1. Get some decent metrics into a chart of 60 days

Secondary actions

  1. Allow for more than just one action
  2. Registration forms

*Scour the internet and look for great examples of these*

For more information contact SEO Liverpool

Some Excellent Search Marketing Advice

Some quick tips for budding SEO company or in-house SEO’s

Strategy deployment and competition

Check your competition… simply try and have more content rich pages than them. Assuming you have the same amount of content and same amount of links. Treat it like a head to head race. Then improve your navigation and architecture to get the edge.

Assume we all have healthy marketing budgets to allocate towards these strategies. What do we do? We allocate a % towards each strategy. Because we know it works, and have demonstrated this. That’s what the bigger firms do. Implement as many strategies you can within that budget. Choose the ones based on looking at your competition. Not hard to find out the strategies they’ve deployed already. If you conduct good research, you won’t need to deploy all these strategies. Implement as many as you can afford and make sure you have conversion processes.

A bit about conversion.

Create a measurable goal for each page. Lots of pages have great filler and content, but don’t compel readers to take action. Capture an email, lead, sale, etc. Have a clear call to action at the end of the page to get to the next step. Put an phone number on there, or a simple a link that advances the process. Don’t make users search for the call to action.

When collecting personal info, make people feel secure about it. Get a security certificate. Some laws require it. Make the contact page have multiple mechanisms of communication. This is your opportunity to increase conversion rate.

Your ideal SEO team:

Designer
Web Developer
Content Writer
Marketing Manager
Wiz Technical Manager
Expert SEO Specialist
Expert Strategist that’s done it more than once

SEO Liverpool would appreciate your feedback

7 Proven Tips That Will Get You To Number 1

Some SEO tips from the offices of SEO Liverpool company Summit Online Marketing.

Now everyone has heard that content is king. It’s really all about the text, video, images in a keyword rich environment.

* Tip 1: Get good copy to support the keyword research. If it’s an appliance part – find images and text to support it. Video too.

* Tip 2: Navigation and architecture. Ability to choose structure that the engines can index. Be careful of certain types of Javascript and other non-indexable navigation.

* Tip 3: Blogs. Another form of content. Pictures, text, images served in a slightly different manner. It’s a strategy. You don’t need to use all these strategies to dominate, but in a competitive arena, you need to deploy more and more to compete.

* Tip 4: Quality and keyword rich inbound links. Utilise keywords in link text – avoid using your company name. Helpful resources at Google Webmaster Central, and on the Thinkprofits website. Yahoo! Site Explorer is a great tool to measure inbound links. The bottom line is you want links from other websites to your own.

* Tip 5: The database you install is important. Make sure the engines can index the content in your database. It’s well worth the investment to get the right database in place.

* Tip 6: Electronic press releases. There is so much we can do with PR to get sites on Google often within 24 hours.

* Tip 7: Domain name strategy. We do find many people are missing out on this. When the opportunity arises to purchase a keyword rich domain, although not always possible, if the opportunity is there – set it as primary domain. Get extra points for that e.g. LuxuryYachtCharters.com will help rank. Register your domain for a long term, because it may give you more points. Another idea is to register your keyword rich domain, and forward it to your primary site. Also assist in getting more traffic by address bar navigators.

Hope you enjoy these quick search engine optimisation tips

The Secret to Getting Projects (Even Big Ones) Done Fast Part 2

Professional Copywriters Never Get Stuck!

Sure — of course, everyone can have writer’s block, even a professional copywriter that is being paid £500 to write a hard-punching salesletter. But the professional copywriter won’t get stuck long!

You see, most Professional copywriters that write web copy and salesletters for a living will reach into their SWIPE file (a stash of old salesletters and headlines that were kept and filed away by the copywriter). Once the copywriter pulls out the stash of winning headlines and sales copy that had been filed away, it’s just a matter of time to review the material that will spark NEW ideas and bring the clarity of the project into focus.