Search Engine Optimisation
Top Google Innovations of 2010
With the end of 2010 rapidly approaching, it seems appropriate to look at the biggest innovations for the year in the world of Google search and what they mean for search engine optimization (SEO). Google Caffeine, Google Instant, Place Search, Instant Preview; these dynamic new systems implemented by Google over the past year have changed the SEO landscape forever. Now let’s delve deeper into each one.
Google Caffeine
In response to the changing shape of the Internet over the last couple of years, Google completed a massive overhaul of their indexing system to increase the speed and freshness of its search results. Google launched Caffeine in June of this year and now updates its index in real-time as it finds new information. Google’s database stores almost 100 million gigabytes of data with over 100,000 gigabytes of new data being added every day!
So how has this affected SEO? News results and social media posts (eg Twitter updates) are now indexed and displayed instantaneously. Website updates are now indexed and displayed by Google within a matter of days rather than weeks, making the effects of website optimization much more immediate. And updates made by Google to its search algorithms now affect rankings immediately making top SEO rankings far less stable with ranking fluctuations now occurring daily, hourly and even from one minute to the next.
With the launch of Caffeine, Google now places a far greater importance on keeping your website content fresh and unique. Frequent updates and additional content are now, more than ever, essential to keep Google coming back to your website and indexing your content.
Top 3 Reasons Why Most Businesses Fail Online
Over the past year we have seen rapid changes in the online marketing arena and the rate of change doesn’t look like slowing anytime soon. In that time we have helped many businesses take their online marketing to the next level. From the sidelines, we’ve also watched many businesses fail as they set about their online marketing the wrong way.
Here are the 3 top reasons most businesses fail online…
1. Not Investing In Your Website
Probably the most misunderstood area of online marketing is the importance of your website. Most business owners don’t have an issue with spending $5,000 or $10,000 per month on advertising their business online but hesitate when it comes to spending the same amount as a one-off investment in their website design. This is simply a huge mistake. Investing in the performance of your website can double the rate it converts visitors into sales. This results in receiving twice as many sales from the same advertising budget. Put another way, achieving the same results from half the budget on an ongoing basis.
5 Ways To Make Money With SEO
There’s no doubt that search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most profitable marketing channels available to businesses, yet why do so many companies fail to make any money from SEO? Here are 5 strategies we use on a daily basis to increase the profits we generate for our clients from SEO…
1. Focus On The Right Keywords
Seeing your website rank on the first page of Google can be very exciting but that excitement will quickly dissipate if you don’t start seeing the profits start rolling in. While SEO is all about ranking a website at the top of Google, the keywords you choose to focus on will make the difference between generating a profit or taking a loss.
Focusing on keywords that have a high search volume each month isn’t the only factor you should consider. Whether the keyword is a transactional keyword (ie a keyword that a searcher types in to buy something) or an informational keyword (ie a keyword a searcher types in to research something) will make all the difference to how much profit you make from SEO.
2. Improve The Performance of Your Website
Many business owners are happy to spend $3000 or more per month on marketing their business but hesitate when it comes to investing in their website – this is a huge mistake. Your website holds the key to unlocking the full profit potential the Internet provides… the better your website performs, the more profit you will make.
One of our recent clients hired us for both SEO and website design. After 4 months of SEO we increased their traffic by 207% from 527 to 1,620 visits per month. We also redesigned their current website, improving their website conversion rate by 327% (ie from 1.33% to 5.68%). The result? We increased the number of sales leads they were receiving to 92 leads for the month, up from 7 leads per month when we first started – an overall increase in performance of 1,214%! That’s the power of a good website.
How Will Google Instant Affect SEO?
Google recently launched an update to their search engine that refreshes search results as a user is typing. Referred to as ‘Google Instant’ the update was launched to save searchers time and to provide faster results. Google Instant has launched in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia with Australia soon to follow.
Is SEO Dead?
After the launch of Google Instant there was a flurry of activity in the blogosphere and online forums touting that Google Instant could be the death of SEO. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Google Instant updates results as a searcher types but the displayed results continue to need SEO to be ranked for those searches.
More Search Results For A Single Search
Google Instant updates search results as you type (without the need to click ‘enter’ or ‘search’) which means you will see multiple search results pages for the same search. The faster a searcher finds what they are looking for the faster they will stop typing in the search box and start clicking on the ranked websites.
SEO Guide To Launching A New Website
With all the time, effort and money that goes into getting top SEO rankings and building a stream of consistent organic traffic, great care must be taken when developing and launching a new website that replaces an existing one.
It can take months or even years to get top SEO rankings but you can lose these rankings in a matter of hours. With this in mind, here are a set of guidelines to help maintain your website’s SEO value and minimise any negative impact on your rankings.
Maintaining URLs and Linking Structure
If your website has been online for a while then you have likely built some value for your current website through internal and inbound links. Before you develop your new website it’s important to keep in mind that any changes to the URL of any existing pages will diminish the value of those pages. With this in mind, and wherever possible, you should maintain the same URLs and linking structure in your new website.
If your website has a large number of pages indexed by Google or if internal pages on your current website are already ranking you should use the same URL structure for those pages so that all previous links do not need to be redirected. If your current website uses a search-engine-friendly link structure it would be best for SEO purposes if that structure was carried across to your new website.
