See how forum members responded or share your own thoughts here:
Which Keyword Am I Indexed For?
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Related Articles? Related Forum Posts? Posted on 5:20 PM by Rome | 0 Comments
See how forum members responded or share your own thoughts here:
Which Keyword Am I Indexed For?
del.icio.us Related Articles? Related Forum Posts? Posted on 9:48 AM by Rome | 0 Comments
This week I asked my social media followers:
++How do you measure the success of your SEO work?++
Netmeg: $$ this year vs. $$ last year.
Chiropractic: Phone calls.
Realicity: The value of the initial leads & sales generated via search as well as long-term impact from the lifetime customer value.
Marcusbowlerhat: It depends on the campaign & client but ideally, conversions & goals in analytics beat ranking or traffic reports.
JTPotts: Conversions: Forms filled out, driving directions retrieved, documents downloaded, and occasionally coupons redeemed.
yankeerudy: Metrics tied to objectives set before work started i.e., conversion rate, raw organic visits, etc. Definitely not rankings!
oleary: One way to measure the success of SEO work is to look at total number of keywords sending traffic.
anthonydnelson: New customers, conversion rate %, and sales brought in from non-branded organic traffic.
noelx99: More customers/leads/business for my clients.
TomSchmitz: I look at target keyword traffic, all non-$ search (traffic & keyword diversity).
Matt Crouch: Depends on the client, their goals and what part of the website I am able to have input in. Is the client looking for traffic, forms filled out, phone calls, orders placed?
At the end of the day I am still looking for traffic. If traffic is increasing and those sources were influenced by my work. Now if I wrote the copy, picked the products to sell, etc., I may hold myself responsible to other goals.
Dianna Huff: Depends ? increased (targeted) traffic, conversions, increased search engine presence for targeted keywords and leads.
Rob Snell: I'm all e-commerce, so revenue, revenue, revenue. We measure top 100 pages by organic traffic/revenue, and then long tail. We also assign revenue per visitor to each keyword, then measure the rank to determine where we should focus efforts, to see if improved rankings would be worth the SEO work or not.
Sarah Theodorou: Improved traffic to the site from engines because of increased search visibility. Improved traffic levels from referral sites where I have improved the presence.
Most importantly, that improved level of traffic from engines and referral sites has converted.
Google+
Jon Henshaw: Increased organic search traffic that results in higher site engagement, goal completions and/or increased ad revenue.
Joe Hall: What Jon Henshaw said. But also it depends on who the work is for. If it's for a client then we work with them on what their key performance indicators (KPI's) are. If it's for us, then it's usually conversions.
Thomas Rosenstand: Easy. When my clients' business goes through the roof thanks to my work. I don't care about their rankings and/or traffic. I care about their revenue. So do they ;-)
Tilak Bisht: I measure organic search traffic with increased revenue and profit.
Jorge Steffen: What stage of what kind of project are we in? Organic growth and goal completions (think sign-ups or subscriptions) could be more important early and transfer conversion optimization might fit better later in a project.
Denis Desnoyers: For me, it's quite simple. When I see a site that I put up for a client winding up on the first page of any search engine and staying there for targeted keywords, my clients are happy and so am I. You can't crunch the pride you get for your work into numbers.
Mark Edmondson: Revenue increase from non-brand keywords.
David Pavlicko: Revenue increase, non-branded search volume, and conversions. Determining goal values for conversion types and applying those to goals within analytics has really helped demonstrate the value of our services and justify our fees.
Scott Van Achte: Totally case by case. Sometimes conversions in the form of sales, leads, sign-ups, etc. Sometimes strictly traffic. Revenue increases. And even sometimes, just the ranking itself, traffic being unimportant (yes, I have had at least one client that only cared about this for a variety of reasons).
Kevin Gallagher: Success is measured by whatever the clients goals are and are not necessary what we would perceive them to be.
And...
Jill's Response: Increased targeted website traffic to the pages they should be landing on, and increased conversions, phone calls, leads and sales.
Want to participate in the High Rankings Question of the Week?
Follow @JillWhalen on Twitter
Like High Rankings on Facebook
Circle Jill Whalen on Google+
an SEO Services company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen If you learned from this article, be sure to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so you can be the first to receive similar articles in the future!
Posted on 2:13 AM by Rome | 0 Comments
The Real Web SEO team have been working closely with Graham and Green, known for their contemporary furniture and stylish home accessories, to improve their search engine listing results. To do this we targeted specific keywords, chosen by Graham and Green, which were directly related to the products they sell. When we first started working with Graham and Green they specified that they wanted to be the top result in Google for the key words ‘home accessories.’ They also wanted to focus on other internal product pages such as those for door knobs and designer kitchen furniture, and aim to gain a higher result on Google for them.
We are pleased to say that we have already achieved the top result on Google, for Graham and Green’s chosen key words ‘home accessories,’ fighting off the previous leading results, which were large department stores. This result was achieved purely though organic advertising using SEO techniques including blogging and external link generation. You can see this for yourself by typing in ‘home accessories’ into the Google search bar.
Our SEO experts are currently working on improving Graham and Green’s search results for the key words ‘door knobs’ as they relate directly to one of their significant products. Graham and Green have a wide range of door knobs made from materials such as glass, chrome and wood, featuring designs including flowers and stars. We have been experimenting with paid advertising, using a Google pay per click advert for the key words ‘door knobs,’ which has certainly had a positive effect. Our main focus is of course on organic advertising, through crucial SEO techniques including blogging and external link generation. Another key element, important to improving SEO, is the text that features on the actual product pages. For Graham and Green’s door knob product page we have added extra content about door knobs, detailing the types of door knobs available, their function and the styles they are available in. Each individual page link also features the words that relate to the product featured on the page, which also helps with key word rankings.
Shabby Chic Furniture and other amazing products from Graham and GreenWe’re pleased to announce that Graham and Green, known for their inspirational contemporary furniture and fabulous home accessories are enlisting our SEO services to improve sales and brand awareness. Working around the clock with the development team from Juno, we settled on an information architecture that satisfied customers, search engines and Graham and Green themselves. [...]
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) for E-commerceHow many Search Engine Marketing techniques do you use? 1, 2, more….? There are four different ways to maximise your online marketing campaign, some with short term gains, some with long term gains: 1. Pay Per Click Advertising The quickest way to make sales online is to go directly to the search engines and pay [...]
Experienced SEO Company (Search Engine Optimisation)RealWebSEO.com has worked with over websites since it began working on search engine optimisation for an IT support team named Little Fish. Since reaching the golden #1 position for Little Fish on their main keyword “IT Support” (currently at #2) the team have won over many other search results with incredibly positive outcomes. Much keeps [...]
Google Fix Search Engine Results!Google have (for the first time) fixed their own search engine results. Before anyone sues don’t panic… Google have teamed up with the Samaritans and other charities to help people in need. If anyone is looking for ways to commit suicide for example they’ll notice the number to call the Samaritans who are especially trained [...]
What’s the deal with Google Sitelinks?If you use Google a lot for searching the internet, you may have noticed some changes in recent weeks. When you search for a brand e.g. “Graham and Green”, you will see that the majority of the first page of Google has changed. This is because Google have recently made some changes to how they [...]
Labels: engine, Graham, Green, improvements, Search
Posted on 3:11 PM by Rome | 0 Comments
This week I asked my social media followers:
++How do you measure the success of your SEO work?++
Netmeg: $$ this year vs. $$ last year.
Chiropractic: Phone calls.
Realicity: The value of the initial leads & sales generated via search as well as long-term impact from the lifetime customer value.
Marcusbowlerhat: It depends on the campaign & client but ideally, conversions & goals in analytics beat ranking or traffic reports.
JTPotts: Conversions: Forms filled out, driving directions retrieved, documents downloaded, and occasionally coupons redeemed.
yankeerudy: Metrics tied to objectives set before work started i.e., conversion rate, raw organic visits, etc. Definitely not rankings!
oleary: One way to measure the success of SEO work is to look at total number of keywords sending traffic.
anthonydnelson: New customers, conversion rate %, and sales brought in from non-branded organic traffic.
noelx99: More customers/leads/business for my clients.
TomSchmitz: I look at target keyword traffic, all non-$ search (traffic & keyword diversity).
Matt Crouch: Depends on the client, their goals and what part of the website I am able to have input in. Is the client looking for traffic, forms filled out, phone calls, orders placed? At the end of the day I am still looking for traffic. If traffic is increasing and those sources were influenced by my work. Now if I wrote the copy, picked the products to sell, etc., I may hold myself responsible to other goals.
Dianna Huff: Depends ? increased (targeted) traffic, conversions, increased search engine presence for targeted keywords and leads.
Rob Snell: I'm all e-commerce, so revenue, revenue, revenue. We measure top 100 pages by organic traffic/revenue, and then long tail. We also assign revenue per visitor to each keyword, then measure the rank to determine where we should focus efforts, to see if improved rankings would be worth the SEO work or not.
Sarah Theodorou: Improved traffic to the site from engines because of increased search visibility. Improved traffic levels from referral sites where I have improved the presence.
Most importantly, that improved level of traffic from engines and referral sites has converted.
Google+
Jon Henshaw: Increased organic search traffic that results in higher site engagement, goal completions and/or increased ad revenue.
Joe Hall: What Jon Henshaw said. But also it depends on who the work is for. If it's for a client then we work with them on what their key performance indicators (KPI's) are. If it's for us, then it's usually conversions.
Thomas Rosenstand: Easy. When my clients' business goes through the roof thanks to my work. I don't care about their rankings and/or traffic. I care about their revenue. So do they ;-)
Tilak Bisht: I measure organic search traffic with increased revenue and profit.
Jorge Steffen: What stage of what kind of project are we in? Organic growth and goal completions (think sign-ups or subscriptions) could be more important early and transfer conversion optimization might fit better later in a project.
Denis Desnoyers: For me, it's quite simple. When I see a site that I put up for a client winding up on the first page of any search engine and staying there for targeted keywords, my clients are happy and so am I. You can't crunch the pride you get for your work into numbers.
Mark Edmondson: Revenue increase from non-brand keywords.
David Pavlicko: Revenue increase, non-branded search volume, and conversions. Determining goal values for conversion types and applying those to goals within analytics has really helped demonstrate the value of our services and justify our fees.
Scott Van Achte: Totally case by case. Sometimes conversions in the form of sales, leads, sign-ups, etc. Sometimes strictly traffic. Revenue increases. And even sometimes, just the ranking itself, traffic being unimportant (yes, I have had at least one client that only cared about this for a variety of reasons).
Kevin Gallagher: Success is measured by whatever the clients goals are and are not necessary what we would perceive them to be.
And...
Jill's Response: Increased targeted website traffic to the pages they should be landing on, and increased conversions, phone calls, leads and sales.
Want to participate in the High Rankings Question of the Week?
Follow @JillWhalen on Twitter
Like High Rankings on Facebook
Circle Jill Whalen on Google+
an SEO Services company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen If you learned from this article, be sure to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so you can be the first to receive similar articles in the future!
Posted on 11:43 AM by Rome | 0 Comments
Hi Jill,
I am starting a vacation rental site (I know, groan, very competitive). BUT--I do have a particular niche and a lot of great related keywords within this niche (thanks to your Lynda.com course) instead of the prevalent "vacation rental" phrases everyone uses.
Anyway, here's my dilemma. Once my site is ready, I'll be approaching owners within the niche. They will upload their own info, pictures, etc. It will likely take at least a month or two for me to feel as if I have enough of a database to look respectable. (I HATE going to a rental site that has only a few rentals available per region. I think it looks small-time and unprofessional.) So I really don't want people to find me for the first few months. My thought was that I would not add my new keyword-rich titles, headings, links, etc., until after a month or so, to keep people from finding me too soon (ironic, I know).
Does this plan seem sound? How long does it normally take Google to recheck sites? Would it be better to just put the keywords in place now, since it might take Google and Bing a while to index the site again? If I submit an XML site map, do they go and check it right away?
Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated. Thanks!
Jami
++Jill's Response++
Hi Jami,
I wouldn't worry too much about Google finding you too soon. It's likely they won't drive too much traffic right away anyway, especially if you don't have links pointing to the site.
If you don't want to be indexed at all, then simply exclude the entire site using your robots.txt file and remove the exclusion when you're ready.
But if it were me, I would optimize it and get it indexed as soon as possible to build up age and eventually authority. The interesting thing is that Google prefers sites that are more fleshed out, as well (just like people). So as you build it up with more rentals, Google will like you better also!
Hope this helps. Oh, and I'm glad that you found my Lynda course so helpful!
Best,
Jill
del.icio.us Related Articles? Related Forum Posts? Labels: Incomplete
Posted on 7:10 AM by Rome | 0 Comments
When I teach my SEO classes, I begin by telling the students all the things that SEO isn't. I've always felt that it was important because they're often expecting to hear some secret formula for SEO success. And why wouldn't they, with all the myths and outright wrong/bad information that constantly swirls through the SEOsphere? When I finish telling them that everything they thought was SEO really isn't, they stare at me with their mouths hanging open. So I tell them what SEO actually is:
Making your website the best it can be for the search engines and your site visitors.
Unfortunately, that doesn't do much to alter their blank stares. After all, it's an incredibly open-ended definition of SEO. Still, it's the only one that truly encompasses what good SEO is all about, as well as why you need to do it. While my method of SEO has always been based on that principle, more people are coming around to it in the wake of Google's Panda Algorithm.
Pre-Panda, many people built thriving businesses using the following basic SEO process:
Buy a keyword-rich domain name that encompasses the products you want to sell.Build a templated website around it.Link internally to the product pages with descriptive anchor text.Use those same keyword phrases in the Title and H tags.Submit the website URL to lots of directories.Drop links to the website in other people's blogs and forums.
Voila! Instant Google success!
They'd repeat the process hundreds of times with different types of products, and then run on autopilot. While it might not have worked on every site they created, the sheer volume of websites they ran would be enough to make them a decent living.
So maybe there was a secret formula after all?
Perhaps, but after Google's Panda Algorithm was implemented, many (but not all) who followed and succeeded with that formula for years suddenly lost a good chunk of their revenue.
What changed?
My own speculation, based on numerous websites that I've reviewed where this happened, is that Google finally decided that there needed to be more to a website than having "SEO in all the right places." And it makes sense. Why should one site do better than another just because they read up on SEO and knew the best places to stick their keywords? It shouldn't. And by allowing exactly that to happen, Google was enabling sites with old-fashioned, by-the-book SEO to beat out potentially higher quality websites.
The result was that Google not always giving their own users (the searchers) the best, most relevant sites for the search query at hand. Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally blaming Google here. It has to be a daunting task for a machine to know the difference between an okay (but great with SEO) site and a great (but perhaps not so great with SEO) one. Especially when so much of how Google tried to determine relevancy and quality was based on links ? and even more on anchor text. It simply became too easy to game that system.
Giving Google What They Wanted
I certainly understand and even empathize with those site owners who've lost a significant portion of their income. They were just giving Google what it wanted. And because it worked so well, they had no reason to go above and beyond their basic formula. Why build a brand for your company when a keyword-rich domain would provide a better return on investment? Why spend time becoming an expert in your industry and educating your target market on the intricacies of your products when you could hire someone to write low-quality "SEO articles" and submit them to article directory sites instead?
Interestingly enough, many of the business owners I've talked to who have been getting by with formula SEO all these years have told me that they have tons of happy customers. Yet there are no obvious signs of this online, such as glowing reviews on Google Places or other online review sites (there aren't bad ones either). How are customers even supposed to remember the name of a company called something like WoodAndMetalDiningRoomChairs.com? (I just made that one up.)
Mainly, customers found these websites through Google, made their purchase and received their merchandise. There's nothing wrong with that, but there was also no personal connection made. This is further illustrated by the fact that if you look at social media sites, you won't see much chatter about these companies. In fact, many of them don't even use social media, or simply have cursory accounts. Again, they didn't need to.
No Marketing Budget
A marketing person, plan, or budget was never necessary nor even a consideration. Sadly, for those companies, they don't have much choice anymore if they want to stay in business. But ironically, now that they really need a marketing budget, there's no money in the till to go toward it.
If I've just described your business and websites ? even if you haven't lost a portion of your revenue (yet), you may have thought you could hire a new SEO company to mix in a little extra SEO mojo and fix up your Google problems. But while they might find some on-page or off-page things you could be doing better, I wouldn't count on that to bring back your lost traffic and sales.
So what should you do?
You need to seriously rethink your online strategy. You need to stop saying, "Well, it always worked for me in the past." You need to build a brand and you need to market the heck out of it. You may even need to consolidate all your related keyword-rich domain websites into one big brand website. (Don't do that last one without consulting a professional.) You need to learn everything you can about social media marketing and start doing it. You need to get in contact with your happy customers and ask them to write reviews online as well as to evangelize about you to everyone they come in contact with. You need to also keep in contact with them in a variety of ways.
All of those things are going to make a much bigger difference over the long haul than rewriting your title tags or adjusting your keyword density. The big takeaway here is that while your website may already be the best it can be technically for search engines, it's time to make it the best it can be for your users. Both parts of that equation are equally important. It's not going to be quick or easy, but if you want to stay in business, it's probably going to be necessary.
Jill
Posted on 9:44 PM by Rome | 0 Comments
Jill,
I was wondering if you had any advice about which option is better SEO wise?buying a domain for a microsite or adding the information to your website as additional content? Through keyword research I saw that any keywords about [this subset of our business] was producing a lot of monthly searches, some (450,000 searches monthly). So I came up with this microsite that talked about this and then suggested our products on it as well.
We launched it last week and I noticed that the search engines haven't even cached it yet. So I'm curious if we would have showed up faster if we had bought a unique domain? I would be grateful if you could provide any feedback you experienced if you were ever in this situation.
Thank you!
Kim
++Jill's Response++
Hi Kim,
Personally, I've never been a fan of microsites, and I usually recommend keeping the content on your main domain. It usually has some authority built up that a new microsite domain wouldn't have.
But more important than where it is housed is how you link to it from the rest of your site. I looked on your main site and couldn't see any obvious links to the new content. You have to integrate it into your site in order for it to be noticed, read, and indexed by Google -- regardless of what domain it lives on.
Remember, if you don't want to promote it (by linking to it from the rest of your site), you can assume that Google won't either! This means that the content should be good enough that you want to promote it from other appropriate areas of your main site. And just one link from one page is likely not going to cut it either. If this content is to truly be a worthwhile part of your site, then your best bet is to link to it from your main navigation so that it's easy for people and search engines to find.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Jill
Jill Whalen is the CEO of High Rankings, an SEO Services company in the Boston, MA area since 1995. Follow her on Twitter @JillWhalen If you learned from this article, be sure to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so you can be the first to receive similar articles in the future!
del.icio.us Related Articles? Related Forum Posts? Posted on 8:56 PM by Rome | 0 Comments
Hi Jill,
I ran my website through a website grader type of tool and it provided me with the following recommendations:
1. Set up a 301-redirect from the non-www version of our site to the www-version so that we get proper credit.
2. Change our text-to-html ratio to be 15% or higher.
Are these advisable?
Thanks,
Rebecca
++Jill's Response++
Hi Rebecca,
1. I checked your site in Google's cache and it appears that Google already understands that the www.example.com version is the same as example.com (no www).
You can check this yourself by viewing the cache for your site here:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://example.com/
(Change example.com to your real domain.)
And see if they say, "This is Google's cache of www.example.com" or "This is Google's cache of example.com." In most cases these days, Google has merged both the www and non-www /redirect-non-www, which means that it's not necessary to 301-redirect the non-www to the www.
That said, even though it's not necessary for most sites, it's still good practice to redirect them if it's not too much trouble to do on your web server. You can also set your preference for www or non-www via your Google Webmaster Tools account.
2. With reference to having a 15% or higher text-to-HTML ratio, there's absolutely no truth to that whatsoever. Someone, somewhere just made that up for something to put in their silly website grading tool! :)
Hope this helps!
Best,
Jill
del.icio.us Related Articles? Related Forum Posts? Posted on 12:39 AM by Rome | 0 Comments
Things have been pretty quiet so not much to report this week. I did have a nice dinner out in NYC last week and met up with a bunch of old SEO friends at SMX East. Other than that it's been mainly same-old same-old.
Speaking of which, I'm always looking to meet up with other Internet marketers. If you're ever near the Framingham, MA area and want to meet up for lunch or a drink or something, let me know. It gets a bit boring working from home all by my lonesome these days. Maybe we could plan a High Rankings Advisor meet-up!
Catch you in 2 weeks! ? Jill
del.icio.us Related Articles? Related Forum Posts? Labels: Wrapup
Posted on 7:58 PM by Rome | 0 Comments
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