SEO Tips For Internet Marketers

The human brain constantly looks for patterns and relationships between objects, emotions, words and sound. When it comes to the ‘Science of SEO’ we need to put all emotions aside to separate the facts from our own feelings, values or emotions.

Google’s search engine algorithm still remains a closely guarded secret.  Knowing how Google works can be very profitable as high rankings equates to high traffic levels on a website, especially on keywords which many people enter in.

Google reportedly looks at between 300-500 signals to decide where websites will rank when a search term is inputted.  The only way to get an idea of how Google’s algorithm works is to take a scientific approach by looking at patterns in the highest ranked websites or by performing controlled experiments on obscure keywords.

Lots of people have their own ideas on how Google works, sometimes unfortunately they fall into these common traps below…

The website SEOMoz.org is well known for creating experiments on Google and reporting search engine ranking factors using real data from highly ranked websites. Even with this data laid out in front of people still people are going away with misconceptions about the data and what really matters in regards to search engine ranking factors.

One metric which has been discussed a lot is the number of Facebook “shares” relating to a better ranking in Google; more Facebook shares significantly correlates to higher rankings in Google. This led to many people proclaiming that Google now uses Facebook ‘shares’ as part of it’s ranking algorithm, i.e. proof that social SEO is alive & kicking.  This is not true though the shares are a consequence of high rankings and not a cause, this has recently been confirmed by Google top man Matt Cutts.

With this logic you could say that any car painted in Ferrari Red (Pigment Red 254 for any racing car fans) is faster than the average car.  Looking blindly at car colour statistics will show a significant spike in the average speed of cars painted in this red racing colour, a colour only fast Ferrari cars are allowed to use!  If I painted an average family car in Ferrari red paint then it’s not going to go any faster, the speed is a consequence of the colour, not the cause.

When I feed my dogs I rustle a big packet of dog biscuits and they come bounding in to the kitchen.  They associate the rustling sound with getting fed and as most people know, dogs LOVE food.  Even the sound of a rusting packet gets them excited and they start watering at the mouth!  Without going deep into psychology it’s plain to see that sights, sounds and words can trigger reactions in human or animal brains.  This can unfortunately backfire in something sensitive and emotionally attached as the SEO for your own website.

Many times we have witnessed some sort of change to a website followed by a increase or decrease in keyword search engine rankings.  However big or minor the change, it usually results in the website owner associating the change we made with the change in Google’s ranking.  Can you safely say that online change [A] resulted in ranking change [B]? The answer is ‘maybe’, it could have been a mere coincidence or the change really could have effected the rankings.  There’s sometimes no solid evidence backing up these changes unless you repeat the change in the same settings again and again and see the same results.  With knee-jerk reactions some website owners undo the change if this happens or start pointing blame at someone/something; this can hold a website back and cause un-due stress when it may not even have been a related incident at all!

Search engine rankings are quite fickle, there’s well documented variance around ranking positions which sometimes makes them bounce up and down for no reason.  One of our websites has been number 1 in Google.co.uk for the past 15 months for it’s main keyword; Google Webmaster Tools reports that surprisingly 7% of the time it’s actually not number at 1, a figure closely reflected in other websites we manage (including major brands).  Nothing is set in stone on Google, especially with new sites which can be promoted highly one week and be held back for another 3 months whilst they mature, it’s important just to plough on with SEO and stop worrying about little fluctuations.

Sometimes the biggest thing holding a website back is the website’s owner themselves.  People’s core values may hold them back from improving something that already works, they may have the “if it ain’t broken then why fix it?” sort of attitude. Conversion optimisation is a legitimate way to try and convert more visitors into customers by testing variations of pages or page elements and seeing which version makes the most sales overall.  Improving conversions is SEO-friendly, even Google have their own software to perform it and they state it will not change rankings.  Many website owners who are doing well are quite happy never to improve on their websites but they will fight to the bitter end to gain more traffic.  The ironic thing is that they could make more sales out of the existing traffic by improving conversion percentages; this is a much quicker and cost-friendly solution.

One of the most crippling values to have is to think that linking to your website from other websites deliberately is wrong or ‘un-ethical’. There are common fears that Google will banish or punish you for performing certain types of SEO, some people are so afraid of this that they never progress and end up not doing much off-site SEO in fear of what may happen.  Whereas it’s true that Google does punish people doing lots of bad SEO against it’s terms and conditions just think to yourself that if there was a way to harm a website then why wouldn’t online businesses be harming their competitor’s websites all the time by performing that same bad off-site SEO on their sites?!

Unless you’re website is based off a known brand it’s incredibly hard to promote yourself online and gain valuable backlinks.  Let’s say you sold something boring online like “A4 paper”, could you drum up links and promote your website without getting out there and promoting yourself firstly?  It’s not impossible but it’s very hard and your competitors at the top of Google will certainly be doing SEO whilst you site sits in the lower rankings.

Another dangerous value is thinking something along the lines of: “if it works for him then it must work for me” kind of attitude.  Paying for links and other black hat SEO methods sometimes works wonders in Google and can easily achieve number one rankings on semi-competitive keywords.  This is great until the website gets either reported for spam or eliminated by one of the new Google updates, then it will won’t appear for hardly any keywords and traffic levels will plummet for at least 5/6 weeks.  In the period of a spammy website being at the top of Google some competitors will look at the site (and possibly it’s backlink sources) and could be angry enough to get frustrated and copy the same techniques themselves.  This may not have instant ramifications but in the long term it could be a really bad decision when things turn sour.  Sometimes the original spammy site DOESN’T get any penalty by Google but the site copying the same techniques pushes things a little too far and DOES, it’s a dangerous game.

We’ve covered a lot of SEO myths such as the maximum keyword density percentage myth, W3C validation myth and the controversial NoFollow links counting in Google debate.  Funnily enough we hear time and time again these myths being recycled and ingrained into people’s thoughts on SEO, some people literally refuse that they are wrong because they read about a piece of mis-information about SEO in a book or by an ‘SEO expert blogger’.

Some old SEO tricks used to fool Google and placed websites highly un-naturally for keywords, unfortunately for the spammers Google is ever-changing and algorithm changes have eliminated many of these tricks.  One old SEO technique was to make mini blogs all catered around a certain keyword and then link to the main site on every post, page and footer possible, another was simply stuffing a page full of keywords and hiding the content with CSS tricks.  Whereas it’s sometimes funny to see people still trying to game the system in ways which clearly won’t work, it’s a sad fact that many online businesses resort to these old tricks and think they can get away with it.

Since so much changes online it’s important to learn the correct and latest SEO techniques and not be tempted to try any tricks to ‘fool’ Google.  However hard it may be to admit, your SEO knowledge may not be correct and you should question everything you know by reading the latest blogs and news.  When it comes to beating the competition, whether in war or business, the most flexible and innovative person always comes out on top.

I know it’s hard but try and leave your emotions at the door and do the best SEO you can for your website.  If rankings change when you change something yourself then step back, look at all the facts and think to yourself if the two things are related or if it’s just a coincidence.  If rankings aren’t as good as you hoped then don’t do anything drastic, aim for a easy term and don’t copy bad techniques you see elsewhere, SEO takes time to work.

Forget any moral values, SEO is about results and you are not hurting anyone by doing it; remember that Google’s rankings are calculated just by a clever piece of software.  If you live in fear about what external links may harm your site then remember that people would deliberately harm their competitor’s websites if there were ways to do it.

Be flexible to any opposing ideas on SEO, you never know you could have been doing something incorrectly for years! Relying on old techniques is dangerous, times change and so should your SEO strategy, keep up to date with the latest news and chat about SEO with people in the industry (there are many of them around).

Even if you are doing well there is more room for improvement on your conversion rate percentage, you could be making more sales out of your existing traffic or . If you are number one for a search term then don’t get complacent and stop SEO on that term, it’s always good to keep a few steps ahead of the ever-increasing competition!

Labels: Facts, Feelings, Science, Separating