“The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines.” iProspect keep up to date with the quality guidelines and obey them at all times. It is important to make sure all who are involved with the creation and marketing of the website are well aware of them.

iProspect have seen heavy shifts in search results as follows:

• Poor quality sites pushed down in ranking
• Higher quality (ie. more competitive) sites pushed up in ranking
• An increasing number of high quality sites being caught up in the net, resulting in lower rankings.

Rankings and performance will fluctuate in the initial shift, and over the course of the next few weeks will likely continue to be volatile as Google refines this change.  The change affects roughly 3% of queries in languages such as German, Chinese, and Arabic, but the impact is higher in more heavily-spammed languages. For example, 5% of Polish queries change to a degree that a regular user might notice. This has primarily affected non-brand keywords, and at this time we don’t anticipate shifts in Google’s approach to branded keywords.

iProspect will be monitoring client website visibility and performance results closely over the next couple of weeks. iProspect will provide any changes in tactics and strategies to address this algorithm shift.

This is not the first time Google have made dramatic changes in the algorithm. Some might recall the Google ‘Florida’ update on November 16th 2003 and more recently the Google Panda update. These were similar updates and had a dramatic effect on website rankings around the world.

A lesson to be learned from updates like these is to have a broad online marketing strategy. iProspect recommend a strategy that includes the entire online marketing mix, not one that relies solely on one traffic source (Google). Clients should consider a combination of SEO on Google, Yahoo, Bing, PPC, Display, Facebook, Twitter, Google +, YouTube, EDM, affiliates and online partnerships. Client websites affected by updates like ‘Florida’, ‘Panda’, or ‘Penguin’ will need to employ an online strategy as suggested, to reverse the loss in Google rankings. If there are multiple sources driving traffic to client websites, this should ensure traffic stability in the interim, until the new strategy is implemented.

iProspect always strive to provide a long term digital strategy rather than going for the quick and easy way or following trends. If the competition’s response is to buy links and spam forums, this does not mean iProspect would recommend following suit. iProspect SEO tech and content audits make sure the site is:

• Fully crawlable
• Optimised page titles and meta descriptions
• Optimal  URLs
• Content is categorised appropriately
• Content is SEO optimised and ready for original off site strategy to be deployed.
• High quality sites have been rewarded.
• On site SEO is maintained. This is now more important than ever.

iProspect will continue to monitor the latest developments from Google. In addition, iProspect will continue to use tactics and strategies that contribute to both aggressively targeted content and a positive user experience.  These should fall within Google’s quality targets:

» Optimise sites with the user in mind first, then the search engine. Keeping the user at the forefront of clients optimisation efforts will enable clients to  focus on creating engaging and useful content for their website.  Clients will still be able to pursue users via natural search, and have a better chance of converting them when they arrive. If a great user experience with quality content is provided, a client website will always receive traffic and links organically.

» Maintain a balanced keyword density. Oversaturation of keywords on different pages of client websites can result in higher rankings in the short term. However this will result in a poor user experience and will likely incur penalisation in the long run particularly following the latest Penguin update. There should be significant use of copy on client website pages. That copy should include the primary phrases and important keyword variations, but should be written for users first and search engines second.

» For sites that include on-page advertising, limit identifiable advertising on your pages, especially Google AdSense placements. Google has and will continue to look for pages specifically built as ‘AdSense bait’ and demote them. Too many ads can cause clutter and a poor user experience.

iProspect will monitor client website traffic results for any anomalies. As we learn more about the specific triggers Google is using in this shift, we’ll provide any changes in tactics and strategies to address challenges and opportunities in this new ecosystem.

Grant Davies – Senior Search Specialist – iProspect Melbourne

Many people send lots of paid and organic traffic to their website yet fail to test the pages that they send the traffic to. A large percentage of this traffic is wasted however it can be converted if landing pages are optimised properly. There are some basic principles to take into account when setting up a landing page and below are some top level tips on landing page optimisation.

Once you have created a well though out landing page further optimisation can be done using A/B or multivarient testing, to improve the performance even more.

Grant Davies – Senior Search Specialist – iProspect Melbourne

Google have now unveiled some new mobile search ad formats therefore we thought why not share this information and our understanding of the products on our blog!

Search ads are now combined with mobile to provide a whole new type of advertising and this is how:

Search Ads In Mobile Aps

This relates to any mobile application which gives users the ability to search for information (such as nearby restaurants). Google now allows for sponsored ads to appear above these search results as seen here. Custom search ads will also help app developers earn additional revenue to fund their apps and grow their business on mobile.

Click To Download

Google have now customised an ad type specifically for mobile apps linking them directly to the app store. A growing trend of users searching for mobile app related content in their search engine inspired this product. Now app developers can add icons and information about the app in the ad unit itself so that people can make more informed decisions about what they are downloading

Mobile App Extension

This new beta ad unit enables business to use mobile search ads that can direct people to a page within an app already installed on their phone i.e. a user searches for handbags on Google an add then takes them directly to a discount shopping app that they have already installed.

Hyperlocal Search Ads

Was released a year ago and allows search ads to contain useful local information such as phone number, driving directions and contact numbers. This is perfect for businesses that requires their customers to come to them or for local businesses that have a large competition base.

Circulars

Google began to test this with new ad format with Macy’s in October of 2011. When someone clicks on a search or display ad they can email the special offer or promo to their phone. Users then take the voucher or coupon into the store to redeem the offer.

It is important to note that proximity is now factor with mobile search ad rankings. The distance between a person and a place of business is now a factor in ad rank. For those advertisers who are in close proximity more traffic at a cheaper rate will naturally result. This feature will be effective only when consumers choose to disclose their device location. Location extensions are a great way to prepare for this and will help connect consumers to shop front more easily!

For questions about any of the above please feel free to write on our blog or contact one of our search specialists

Kristin Minus – Search Specialist iProspect Melbourne

Many SEOs in the past and some still today have been using the same techniques since day 1, 2012 is the time to up your SEO game for good, the techniques of the past will no longer work, you can’t just be thinking, page titles, meta descriptions and link building, these things are still important but you must think diversity and have a full online marketing strategy.

This year you need to look at all the things you have been doing in the past and also a lot of new things.
How is your site speed?
Do you have a dedicated server?
How is your site crawlabilty?
Do you have a social strategy?
Is your content the best it possibly could be?
What unique content do you have?
What value does your website add to the internet?
Do you have a Schema?
Are you using Rich Snippets?
How good is your websites user experience?
How can you improve your conversion rates?

These are all really important questions to ask yourself about your website and must be addressed properly in 2012.

Grant Davies – Senior Search Specialist – iProspect Melbourne

You can work out your websites conversion rate by taking the number of visitors to your site and dividing it by the number of sales/leads. For example, if you have 100 visitors to your site and made 1 sale/lead, you would have a 1% conversion rate.If you were to engage in conversion rate optimisation (CRO) the goal would be to increase this conversion rate.

Conversion rates can be increased by a number of methods, the main objective behind CRO is to increase the usability of the website and make the site all that the visitor expects it to be. Even before a visitor visits your site they already have an expectation of what the site is/should be, your goal is create the site that is expected from the user. If the user sees a site that they did not expect then the chances are they will not engage with the site.

You need to engage the visitor in a conversation and answer all these questions for them as soon as possible. It sounds obvious but 95% of websites out there forget, or do no think they need to do these very basic things. Unless you are a big brand and they already know about you, then you must tell them all you can about your business as quickly as possible.

You can do this by writing a captivating headline, on the lines of:
Welcome to {Your Business URL}. For {x} years we have been specialising in {xyz}, today we have {127129} products that have been handpicked by experts for you available to ship worldwide today. You may want to start by checking out our feature specials, or you can shop 3 ways, brand, search, category, our most populatr products are {x,y,z}.

This is just a simple example but you can see the short headline above answers all the 3 questions asked by a visitor and has engaged them in a conversation with your site and themselves.

Grant Davies – Senior Search Specialist – iProspect Melbourne

The feature can be found under the ‘Opportunities’ tab under ‘Analyse Competition’ allowing you to obtain data such as:

-          Impressions

-          Clicks

-          CTR

-          Average Position

This information is broken down into categories and sub categories  in order to find the most relevant data for your brand or product. There is also a feature which allows you to filter competition by country if you are not a global business. Unfortunately all data is anonymous in order to protect the identity of advertisers.

This now gives business the ability to benchmark the performance of your account against others in the market. Use the ‘Explore Ideas’ button to take action and review custom keyword, bid and budget ideas in order to improve performance!

Ideas are classified into three categories depending on your objectives i.e.

1. Increase traffic: i want to maximise clicks even if costs increase
2. Balance cost and traffic: i want more clicks with moderate cost changes
3. Maintain or decrease cost: i want to get the most out of my current budget

All recommended ideas include potential cost increase/decreases, potential impression increase/decreases and potential cost increase/decreases. Ideas are broken down by campaign therefore it is recommended that campaigns are broken out by device, network, product or region etc. in order to find the most valid insights!

Please feel free to post any questions on our blog!

Kristin Minus – Search Specialist iProspect Melbourne

The Google page should spin around for you when you type in ‘do a barrel roll’ or tilt to the side for you when you type in ’tilt’

Fun times!!

If you have been slapped by the Panda, here is what you need to work on to get you out of his grasp.

1. Increase page views.
2. Decrease bounce rate.
3. Increase average time on site.

This may be easier said than done, so below are some ways you can do this.

a. Work on your onsite. Remove copied/scraped content and rewrite or write new content on your subject, make this content as detailed as possible and cover all aspects of the subject, have the content written by an expert in the subject, this should help increase average time on site.

b. Redesign your site to increase user confidence, this should help the bounce rate and increase page views.

c. Remove excessive amounts ads on sites, this should help decrease bounce rate and also increase user interaction and page views.

If in doubt as to whether or not your site is good enough quality, just refer to the Google Webmaster Blog article on building high quality sites. You could even create a survey from the questions asked in the article and get your users or employees/friends to fill out the survey in order to get an external persons point of view, as site owners are often biased towards their creations.

Grant Davies – Senior Search Specialist – iProspect Melbourne

It is important to note that optimising for clicks  is very different to optimising for conversions!

Therefore below is a list of 15 tips that anyone can use to help drive more clicks to their website via online advertising:

1. Compare average cpc’s on the Google Search Network vs the Google Display Network in order to find which is more profitable.
2. Run a search query report in order to identify long tail variations or additional keyword strings that may be less competitive to target.
3. Allocate the majority of budget to those campaigns, networks or keyword clusters which are buying traffic most competitively.
4. Utilise ad extensions such as site links, click to call and placement extensions in order to entice users to click on your ad unit.
5. Test different creative alternatives in order to increase ctr so that average positions can be decreased without harming traffic.
6. Utilise tighter geographical targeting or day parting to maximise on high click through rates and low average cost per click results.
7. Always separate Google search and display campaigns so that budgets and cpc’s can be managed and optimised separately.
8. Evaluate traffic at an individual device level so as to eliminate i.e. mobile or tablet devices if it is too costly or competitive.
9. Attempt to increase quality score by segmenting keyword into highly focused ad groups which as a result will reduce avg cpc’s.
10. Pause expensive keywords if unnecessary or limit the amount budget that they can spend so they do not dominate the account.
11. Utilise other match types such as exact and phrase match keywords as they are usually less competitive than broad based terms.
12. Reduce your maximum bids according to average rank so that a campaign can have maximum reach and visibility overall.
13. Use the keyword tool in order to identify additional keyword variations, misspellings and keyword associations to add to the account.
14. Utilise negative keywords in order to increase click through rates but also to ensure you are not buying irrelevant traffic.
15. Identify whether you are losing impression share due to budget or rank and then optimise accordingly i.e. increase/decrease bids.

Please feel free to post any questions that you may have on our blog!

Kristin Minus – Search Specialist iProspect Melbourne

Do your research when it comes to you keywords, there are some great free and paid tools out there for finding the best keywords for your industry such as the Google Keyword tool.

2. Choose a great URL

Ideally you want a URL with your keyword in it, there has been talk of Google and other search engines taking weight away from keyword rich domains however the links to these domains still have weight and most website will link to your website using your domain name as anchor text, so this will have an indirect improvement in your rankings even if Google does take weight away from having a keyword rich domain name. If you are a brand or large company, using your brand name or company name as the URL is recommended.

3.  Page Titles

Make sure you have your keywords in your page titles, as page titles carry a lot of weight in Search engine optimisation. Page titles are also the first thing your visitors will see in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Google has a page title character limit of 60 characters, you can put more but they will not be shown, it is recommended to keep page titles to 60 characters or less.

4. Meta Descriptions

Make sure you have a well written meta description, the meta description is the second thing a potential visitor will see in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). The meta description should be written similar to a Google AdWords ad, you have more characters to play with though (150 characters in total) the meta description should briefly describe what is on the page and ideally give a call to action to entice the visitor to click on the link and enter your site.

5. Page Content

Create compelling page content that is unique to any other website on the internet, make it written for the user not for search engines, try to include you keywords within the content but make sure it reads naturally, do not keyword stuff, update the content of your website as often as possible and get experts to write the content on the topic they are experts in.

6. Page Design

The design of the website needs to be to a high standard, use a professional designer. A well designed website will increase trust with the user and also help to decrease bounce rates (number of visitors who leave your website without viewing more than1 page) and increase conversion rates (percentage of visitors that convert into the desired action sale/lead).

7. Links

Increase the link popularity to your website, links are basically seen as votes towards your site, the more links you have the more popular you are in the eyes of the search engines. You need not just lots of links but links from related websites, you are better of getting 10 links from related websites than getting 100 links from non related websites. If you are a new website build your link popularity slowly and keep building links all the time.

These are just 7 of the 200+ SEO tips that should be taken in to account when thinking about doing SEO on your companies website.

Grant Davies – Senior Search Specialist – iProspect Melbourne