Bruce Clay AU Blog

Is personal search about semantics?

2010-02-23T00:09:53Z

I was recently reading an interview with a director of Bing, Stefan Weitz about the future of search. Stefan has said that one of the biggest problems that search engines have is trying to ascertain the intent of the searcher. This problem has been around for ages and the example we use at Bruce Clay to properly illustrate it is; if you type in java in the search box, are you trying to find information about the coffee, the programming language or the county? Without any additional keywords within the search query, that intent can be difficult to discover.

Photo by dullhunk via Creative Commons

The next minute I was reading yet another article on personalised search and had a thought, maybe the predominant reason Google instituted personalised search was to better understand the intent of the searcher based on previous searches in terms of language surrounding the query. For example if your personalised searches show 20 previous queries relating to programming language with no queries relating to coffee or an obscure Indonesian island, then it could be assumed your single "java" query would in all probability be related to the programming language. Stefan argues for the need of the search engines to put context around the language and perhaps Google is using personalised search to do just that.

In fact, in the Google video announcing personalised search, they mention that one of the things they hope personalised search will improve is the ability to better determine the searcher's intent. The point I'm trying to make is that with all the negativity surrounding personalised search, perhaps its benefits, particularly surrounding the better identification of intent has been glossed over.

During the course of a regular day I run alot of queries through Google and although I dont have any concrete evidence, I do feel that since personalised search has been turned on by default, my SERP's have got a little better, especially with the search engine seemingly reading my intent better.

While we are on the topic of personalised search, Rand over at SEOmoz had an interesting idea; essentially, he says, "Personalized search is now on by default. This means that every click, branded search, and expression of a "brand preference" or "brand affinity" in Google's results is likely to result in preferential biasing towards that domain in future searches. A "Google" Pontiac message during this Superbowl wouldn't just send users to their site, it would also mean that tens of millions of searchers would now be "personalized" towards that domain."

It's an interesting idea, if you were sure that your company comes up first for a brand search i.e. Nike, then maybe these big corporations should start having "Google Nike" instead of the URL on their brand messaging. This would lead to more people searching Nike and therefore possibly meaning that the Nike web site would come up tops for the search "running shoes" due to your personalised search history.

There are a few caveats for recommending this:

1. Google can decide that personalised search is actually making things worse as supposed to better and just turn it off

2. Users who are not logged in will only have their history tracked for 180 days so you may need a sustained advertising campaign to take advantage of this

3. If you don't appear for your suggested keywords in the organic listings you risk sending a different site your traffic

4. If you are paying for your clicks (eg "search potential" by AmEx) then the traffic to your site is costing you twice (once for TVC, once for adwords click)

There has been a lot of debate within the SEO industry as to what personalised search means. I think anything that helps match a query with better SERP's, is a good thing and to be honest that's why I think Google turned on personalised search for everyone.

The State of the Australian Search Market

2010-02-17T22:54:24Z

Australia has always had a healthy obsession for a few things that make this country great. Things like your favourite sports team, a great day at the beach and a backyard BBQ, are topics that can consume a large amount of time and conversation. There is one oddity that continues to boggle my mind, which is the focus on PPC when it comes to online marketing spend with lower regard for other search activities, like SEO for example. Even now with more and more knowledge emerging it seems that PPC still has the advantage on SEO in Australia by a large margin.

The Market

When online marketing came to the fore a few years ago, the benefits and how to implement PPC were almost immediately understood while SEO was portrayed as a mystical black art, with a bunch of geniuses sitting in a closeted room deciding the movements of Web sites up and down the rankings. Even now with more and more knowledge emerging it seems that PPC still has the advantage on SEO in Australia by a large margin.

Specific search spend figures for the Australian market are a little hard to come but IAB reports that the total search spend was around $900 million for 2009. Of that figure, the brain's trust at Bruce Clay Australia believes that approximately $100-$135 million is spent on PPC management fees (that doesn't include the actually money spent with Google and other services for actually buying the keywords) while roughly $30-$40 million was spent on SEO billings. SEMPO International 2008 data indicates that out of 100 percent of search spend, 87 percent is spent on paid placement (PPC) while the remaining 11 percent was spent on SEO (the remaining budget was spent on paid inclusions and SEM technologies). Yet PPC is said to yield a much lower volume of traffic. It is estimated that it is that 70 percent of Google's search enquiry click-throughs are to search listings provided by the 'natural' search results. So people are more likely to click through to 'natural listings' and it has a significant long term ROI benefit so why do companies and agencies insist on using the majority of their online spending budget on PPC .

Why PPC Dominates

Well for one PPC is a lot easier to explain and understand than SEO, especially when you are trying to explain the differing concepts to a client with limited expertise. Spent $5,000, made $20,000 is a lot easier than explaining that the new optimised content you have written had gained 1,000 visitors and 875 uniques with a decreased bounce rate due to the longtail traffic targeted. Another reason for the promoting of PPC over SEO is that the ROI is actually easier to measure with PPC campaigns. PPC is more like traditional billboards than SEO so traditional advertising agencies have an easier time understanding it as an old fashioned media spend and it's easier to recommend and deliver to their clients.

SEO also needs more feedback and initiative from the clients' side. It means working with the client to conduct keyword research and may even require substantial technical investment on the client's Web site to make it 'SEO friendly' whereas with PPC, clients can have a more peripheral role with the running of the PPC campaign with less demands placed on their time and resources.

Yes, PPC results are immediate and the budget can be controlled. Yes, you can geo-locate advertisements to appear in certain states and towns. Yes, PPC campaigns are relatively easy to implement and fairly easy to measure. However, many reports indicate that the long-term ROI of PPC campaigns are limited, while the opposite occurs with regard to natural or organic traffic (as can be seen from this graph to the right from elliance.com).

Why SEO is Starting to Fight Back

The good news is the tide is turning, a quick Google trends search worldwide shows how SEO has slowly eroded the lead that PPC has had and even overtaken it (red is "PPC" while blue is "SEO"):

The chart below is for Australia and shows a similar phenomenon as to what is happening worldwide (red is "PPC" while blue is "SEO"):

A report from Eyeblaster in October 2009 found that "Australia and New Zealand are among the least likely nations to click or dwell on online display advertising". The explanation given by Eyeblaster was as follows "In less mature markets, where users are novice in online advertising, they receive ads with more open arms. When the market matures, the users' fatigue together with increased competition for their attention reduces engagement significantly. The users' propensity to engage with ads should be taken into account when comparing benchmarks between geographies and verticals."

Essentially Australia is becoming more 'ad-blind' and this is extending to PPC advertisements. SEO has traditionally been giving a bad rap, and the constant flaming efforts by some people in the industry to create linkbait certainly have not helped. However, there is a movement growing behind the art of SEO these days and education is the key. More and more CEOs and CMOs are becoming educated due to more and more SEO information filtering into the mainstream news. More SEO companies are also taking it upon themselves to educate potential clients through free and paid training sessions. The decision makers are beginning to see the value of SEO over PPC, if they need some further proof, here is a great infographic from DIYSEO.

PPC is also becoming more expensive. With more and more companies becoming active and visible in the online realm, more bids on terms will push prices for high visible PPC positions higher and higher, good for Google, bad for companies using PPC to advertise their wares. In fact research suggests that the cost of popular keywords on Google has increased by up to 300 percent in the last three or four years in Australia. SEO has been criticised for its lack of transparency in the past, i.e. how and what exactly we do to help our clients achieve SEO key performance indicators. The industry as a whole has recognised this and most reputable SEO services providers have tried to make their workings as clear and transparent as possible to appease any uneasiness associated with the so-called "smoke and mirror" approach of the past.

The Future

I have a dream. I have a dream where PPC and SEO can exist peacefully and co-inhabit our online world; where these two technologies will be used together to create a symbiotic relationship that will increase ROI for the companies and agencies using them. A recent report by Frost & Sullivan states that "Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) continue to attract advertiser spend in Australia and in a change to previous patterns, the two strategies are becoming more widely adopted simultaneously rather than exclusively" and I think that's a pretty good direction for the Australian online market to be moving in. Studies shown by iCrossing show that clicks, actions, orders, page views, visitors and time on site all increased when SEO and PPC were used together in a complimentary fashion.

I myself am an organic search evangelist. It's something I live and breathe every day. Sometimes I want to shout from the rooftops Gordon Gecko-esque "SEO is good", and a strange shift is slowly happening. Many other people around Australia are starting to feel the same way. We can see that by the way that SEO is catching up to PPC in not only ad spend but searches and mentions around the Web. The more transparent we make the SEO process and the better the education and news around SEO becomes, the more traction it will get and I can't wait for SEO attain its true place alongside PPC in the Parthenon of online spend.

The Complexity of Deciding Which Web Analytics Solution To Use

2010-02-11T22:51:17Z

The majority of online businesses need a tool to measure traffic to determine sources of visitors to their web site and how visitors interact with their site. These measures help determine profitability and areas of the site that are performing well and others that visitors are having difficulties with. As many business owners are aware, the solution to obtaining this data is by using a Web Analytics program to measure and track your site statistics. Using Web Analytics software is integral to your search marketing strategy and is the key to keeping on top of your search traffic, referrals, visitors and more. With paid and free Web Analytics providers which one should you use?

Photo by Search Engine People Blog via Creative Commons

The answer to this question depends on the needs of your business and the type and amount of information that you require. If you're a search marketing agency and measure pay per click campaigns then an Analytics solution will assist in justifying your clients spend and ideally show return on investment (ROI). For those purely interested in organic search traffic then an Analytics solution is the best way to determine and justify your sites return via search engine optimisation. The most popular paid Analytics providers today include Google Analytics, Yahoo IndexTools, Microsoft adCenter Analytics, Omniture, Webtrends and Coremetrics. Another conundrum before deciding on the right solution is whether you want server side Analytics (log file analysis) or client side Analytics (page tagging using JavaScript)?

If data storage is a concern, the best solution is to use a provider that stores the data for you and tracks page visits via page tagging. Otherwise you will need to store the log files on your own server and use a server side solution that does the analysis using your own business resources (the cost of the software, a possible dedicated server, software upgrades, log files maintenance and management all need to be accounted for). Both server side and client side solutions have their advantages and disadvantages as outlined in the table below:

Most solutions today will use page tagging as from a business perspective it is an easier, more accurate and convenient solution. Also as a number of Analytics providers offer the service for free, such as Google Analytics, and therefore the cost of using such a service is a non-issue.

The best solution to deciding which Web Analytics solution to use is to evaluate each product (try and obtain a free trial from paid solutions) and record the key advantages, disadvantages and differences between each and then make a decision on which solution would provide the most benefits to your business/organisation. As Google Analytics is a free and powerful Analytics solution, that has many of the same features of the paid Analytics providers, it is more advantageous to use it than not and it provides a foundation of data in which to compare statistics from other Web Analytics providers during evaluation. It's important to note that no two provider's statistics will be the same and remember it's the data analysts that interpret this data and they need to make the right decisions to justify whether the Web Analytics provider chosen will benefit the business.

Either way I think you will all agree that the only way to gather information in relation to visitors to your site that can help make key business decisions is to choose a quality Web Analytics provider. If cost is an issue, eliminate this obstacle and sign up to Google Analytics today and evaluate whether it is the right solution for your business in 6 months time.

SEO Factors and Trends Report Released

2010-02-10T00:47:22Z

Bruce Clay Australia is proud to announce the release of our "SEO Factors and Trends" report. This report is a concise yet comprehensive review of the more important SEO ranking factors and the changes made to these ranking factors over the past 12 months or so.

The most important 12 ranking factors are thoroughly reviewed and implications for changes in these ranking factors are also discussed. Ranking factors deemed not vital but still important to your search engine optimisation strategy are also listed and additionally there is a preview of what 2010 might bring us in terms of the search landscape. Download the pdf version of this report from the SEO Factors and Trends report page.

Keyword Research-Factors to consider

2010-02-08T00:21:36Z

When doing a keyword research, there are quite a few factors that need particular attention and that are often underestimated. Below are some examples:

Seasonality

If you base your keywords research only from local search from the previous month, you may be risking basing your research on misleading sets of data. The reason behind this is that search patterns naturally change throughout the year and there a broad range of keywords that might be affected by seasonality factors. Imagine you are a company that sells sports merchandise and that wants to identify which Australian sport is the most popular and searched. If the company decides to run a search in May, it will probably think that rugby is the most searched term - see below.

A good way to evaluate seasonality factors is to use Google Insights (as shown in the example above) and the new Google Keyword tool. This tool is only available through your Google Adwords account. The difference between this and the keyword tool available to public search results, is that this(logged in version) gives you the ability to see traffic data month by month. The representation of the above data in the keyword tool will be as follows:

This shows you in details how the distribution of searches varies throughout the year.

Search volumes predictions

Search volume predictions can affect your keyword research. For example, in the information technology industry, new terminologies are constantly being created and others becoming obsolete. Volume predictions can sometimes be identified by global search volumes and global search trends. An indication of how search volumes may vary can be obtained with the tools mentioned above (Google Insights and keyword tool).
See below some example of terms that show increase in Google trends, and have high search volumes worldwide but not yet in Australia:

Google Insights worldwide results for "cloud computing"

Google traffic results for "cloud computing" in Australia

Google Insights results for "mobile seo" worldwide

Google Traffic results Australia for the keyword "mobile seo"

Keep in consideration the global trends especially in similar markets; this might give you an indication on how search trends will develop in the near feature.

British and American spelling dilemma

In the English language, there are a variety of terms that vary according to the British or American spelling. Surprisingly enough there are quite a lot of words that have American spelling but that are highly searched in the Australian market.

See some of the example below:

It is important to not underestimate search volumes around the spelling variation of search terms as they may be commonly used in other markets. Similarly other words belonging to other languages such as French or Spanish might suffer from the same dilemma.

SEO Recap January 2010

2010-02-04T03:44:51Z

Welcome to the first Bruce Clay SEO recap of 2010. In the recap, we explore our analysts' favourite news and blog posts for the past fortnight. This week includes some updates of Google on Mobile phones, the launch of the SEOmoz Open Site Explorer, the moving of Google Social search to beta from labs and events listings with rich snippets.

Photo by boite-en-valise via Creative Commons

Optimised Search Suggestions for mobile using your location

This feature (available in the US and on Android powered & iPhones only at the moment) will optimise search suggestions from Google depending on your position.

From the Google Mobile Blog "when users in the Boston metro area begin typing "Muse", suggestions such as "museum of science boston" and "museum of fine arts boston" are provided because people near Boston frequently look for these very popular museums. On the other hand, users in San Francisco who begin their query with "Muse" will see suggestions for museums in the San Francisco area."

New Click to Call Phone Numbers in Mobile Ads

When you are browsing Google on your newest smartphone and see a PPC that might just answer your search query, there is a very simple way to connect with the advertiser. Just Click. You just click the number and your phone will automatically call the number listed.
Simple easy and effective, I really like this feature. What's more, the ads and phone numbers you see are based on your location.

So, if a store or restaurant has multiple locations, you'll be calling the nearest one. If you are an advertiser who wants to make use of this, check out the AdWords blog that introduces this feature.

SEOmoz launches Open Site Explorer

With the Microsoft and Yahoo search deal, rumours have been swirling that Yahoo may discontinue its popular link information tool. As result of this several alternatives have cropped up, the most recent being SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer.

Open Site Explorer provides a number of data points pulled from SEOmoz's Linkscape tool and its index of the web. It shows stats such as overall link counts and a count of domains that link to a URL, along with anchor text distribution and more. A helpful feature is the ability to compare two domains side by side.

Google Social Search now in beta

Google's Social Search technology is finally ready for the big time, with the company officially moving it from Google Labs to a 'beta' option within the main search system. Google Social search brings in relevant content from users' social networking friends, if they have been posting content that matches the search terms used. The general idea is that people will find results that are from friends or their own trusted online sources will be more relevant to them personally than say, Wikipedia.

Rich Snippets for Events

The new format shows links to specific events on the page along with dates and locations. It provides a fast and convenient way for users to determine if a page has events they may be interested in. These events will be shown just under the entry in the SERP's. The events markup is based on the hCalendar microformat

I Hope you enjoyed this fortnights search engine optimisation recap. More to come in two weeks time. Happy searching.

The Zone of Acceptance

2010-01-21T04:22:52Z

One of the most successful ways we use search engine optimisation to improve pages here at Bruce Clay is by providing content recommendations for each keyword. We do this quite a lot, and are pleasantly surprised by how this procedure can dramatically improve rankings.

Photo by Iain Farrell via Creative Commons

What we try do is locate the most 'imperfect' web pages associated with the keywords we are trying to target. We then modify the pages we are trying to optimise to make them resemble the least imperfect pages we found in the first step (in terms of keyword densities and other factors).

But what I've grown to wonder is 'why does this work?' And why does one keyword recommend a spam like density and for another barely a mention on the page.
The answer has to do with what the search engine believes to be natural, and consequently the sites that lie within their zone of acceptance.

The search engine is not an expert and has no worldly experience, but the purpose of a query is to return the best sites for a particular topic. To work out who are the best sites, it makes an approximation of who the experts are, and in turns looks at its most comprehensive resource to help with the decision. This resource is its index. Making the decision of who are the best sites is based on the population within the index.

The belief is, like much of the Internet, that trust can be placed within the wisdom of the crowds. The population knows who the experts are. If a site does not match that of the general population, then it cannot be an expert. The search engines looks for common characteristics among the index, these commonalities determine the better sites and therefore the zone of acceptance.

Google's 'did you mean' option is a simple example of how this works. A misspelled search query asks Google for an answer outside the majority of the population. It sees an unnatural anomaly and looks elsewhere for what it perceives to be natural. Hence the 'did you mean'.

A site ranking for 'Sydney cricket tickets' will contain vastly different information to a site ranking for 'Sydney cricket'. The purchasing website contains a system for visitors to enter their details and buy the tickets. The research website presents a long article detailing all there is to know of Sydney cricket. So you can see how each themed site and (the keywords they ranked for) would naturally have two contrasting content specifications. The search engines know what is appropriate for each keyword.

The great advantage that our toolset offers is a quickly generated measurement of what a natural looking page is. By applying some math to the top ranking sites, a recommendation is given. So for example, one recommendation is to write the body of content with x amount of words that includes the keyword x amount of times. This is the zone of acceptance. This is what the search engine believes to be a natural fit. We know this because these figures come from the top ranking sites. By giving the content writers a natural target that the search engines are looking for, your chances of improved rankings and SEO effect are increased.

2010 SEO Checklist

2010-01-18T22:42:14Z

2009 has seen so many changes in the Search Engine Industry and you would probably be surprised to realise how these changes have an impact on your business.

The Vince update is already so far away and so 2009 anyway, but 2010 looks very promising and full of exciting innovations that will keep on influencing the way people search, and find.

So here's our 2010 SEO checklist for Marketing Managers:

1. Personalised Search

The Search Engines have come up with so many new ways to personalise your search results, logged-in or not, based on your search history, on your social media profiles, your location, etc. 2010 will see more of these customised results and the challenge will be to maintain relevancy for all users while businesses will have to maintain their search engine rankings in the new top 8+2. For the online marketers, it will become a greater challenge as they will have to manage the balance between more online profiles to maximise their search engine visibility while ensuring that their primary property ranks ahead of the others.

2. Speed matters

Since Matt Cutts revealed during an interview with Web Pro News that Speed will become part of the Search Engines ranking algorithm in 2010. To rank higher, the webmaster will have to optimise code, technology as well as content delivery strategies to win the race.

3. Real-Time Search

Bing opened the ball this year by starting to index tweets, and Google followed and started displaying real-time search results with its "Latest Search Results" option. The online marketers and the public relations people probably had a chill down their spine realising how much more crucial reputation management then became.

4. Videos

Now that online videos are making their ways up in the marketing budgets and that viral marketing as emerged, video organic rankings have become extremely valuable. The search engines as well have jumped on board, and ever since Google acquired YouTube in 2006, the online video spending has only gone up. Google recently introduced sponsored videos via their AdSense network. Ranking for videos has become critical, and the two big questions for webmasters and online marketers is to decide whether:
a) they are willing to pay the big bucks for sponsored videos as opposed to optimising videos for organic results
b) they want to host their own videos to attract more traffic to their site as opposed to having better chances in ranking for their keywords via video sharing sites.

5. Local Search

The release of Google Maps in 2005 has changed the way people search locally. Little by little, Google Maps has delivered more local results, establishing partnership with local directories and mapping companies to improve the quality of their results. It can now be used in so many aspects, from getting directions to a place to getting a closer look with Street View. The introduction of the new dashboard in the Google Local Business Centre earlier this year has once more proven that it has now become essential to be listed on Google Maps. Bing has recently launched their own Maps engine "Bing Maps", which has an emphasis on user experience.
These new Maps engine now provide a new arena where the SMEs in particular can easily be found and rank for their search term + location. These businesses can now also be found by users searching for keywords only, using the geo-targeting features of the new smartphone generation with built-in GPS, and therefore potentially converting a sale in minutes if the business is found by a mobile searcher.
These new local business listings also provide an opportunity for businesses to rank for highly competitive terms, even without a website.

If you want to learn more about SEO, Bruce Clay Australia is organising a 1 Day SEO Training presented by Jeremy Bolt in Sydney on February 17th, Brisbane on April 7th, Melbourne on May 12th, and Sydney on June 9th as well as a 3 Days presented by Bruce Clay in Sydney on March 10th, 11th and 12th.

Deteriorating search engine results

2010-01-14T04:00:38Z

Photo by _Tophee via Creative Commons

The other day at the Bruce Clay Australia offices we had a discussion about how the search results seem to have deteriorated over the past 3 - 4 years. Whether it was searching for cheap hotel rates in Melbourne or trying to find a review for a laptop, it seems more time has to be spent and more searches have to be carried out just to find the relevant information. Now there are a few reasons why this might have happened and I am going to explore a few of these.

Heightened expectations

With all the advances in technology and search engines algorithms, are we expecting too much from the search results? In the past few years, everything has been geared around instant gratification (I think this was a driving force in the development of real-time search) and we are not only expecting results accurately but immediately. Now I struggle to recall my searching habits of 4 years ago but I have a sneaky suspicion that I was willing to cut all the big search engines some slack when it came to searching. I don't think they have that luxury any more.

I think a big part of this heightened expectations comes from knowledge. I know Google has 5000 PhD's just sitting around thinking of ways to improve the algorithm, but when I want to get the cheapest accommodation in Melbourne I dont want to have to navigate between 10 different, yet almost identical aggregator sites in the SERP's before giving up due to frustration and ending up in Wogga Wogga, just because it's easier to find a cheap hotel.

Another interesting observation is that more and more users are using longer (longtail) search queries to find what they are looking for. The question I pose is: are users searching with more specific search phrases because they are more savvy to the way the web works, or is it because the search results are so poor for broad-based queries that in order to find something relevant you are forced to use detailed and lengthy search queries?

TMI

Too much information! Normally a teenager's response to a friend giving one personal detail too many, it can also describe the explosion of web sites, blogs, aggregators and web properties in general. Since March 2005, the number of people using the Internet has doubled to almost 2 billion. The figures around number of actual sites on the internet are a little hazy, but according to Google the number of sites they had explored was 26 million pages in 1998, one billion pages in 2000 and ONE TRILLION PAGES in 2008, and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day.

Now I know Google has some of the best infrastructure, technology and talent at their disposal but if we take the number of pages as products that Google has to provide quality control for, then that's alot of control - even for the world's biggest brand. Not only is there so much more information for Google to sift through, but the information is becoming more complex to evaluate. SEO is becoming more prominent, with alot of people who own web properties having been exposed to some kind of search engine optimisation education and using that knowledge to make their sites more 'appealing' to search engines. Popular blogging platforms like Wordpress also have SEO functionality now built in, straight out of the box, so again, more SEO-friendly pages are added to the web index. Aggregators, with their boilerplate templates are also becoming more popular in the SERPS again, further adding to the congestion.

Social media also comes into this. With Google and Bing starting to index Facebook and Twitter status updates, the amount of information is expected to increase exponentially. However, I think the search engines have the capacity to do this or they wouldn't try.
The Internet is expanding exponentially and pointless pages are taking advantage of Google's ranking system, rendering it unwieldy, Google and the other search engines need to counter this and find a way to once again become dynamic and streamlined and eliminate all those guff and filler sites that take up a large portion of their index (and my time incidentally).

Diminishing core focus on search

When Google first started, all they cared about was search. They put all their efforts and resources into making search better. Now it seems that have moved into fields pretty far flung from search, like renewable energy, cloud computing and mobile phones. Now I realise a simple answer is that they have invested in massive infrastructure and staff numbers to compensate for their diversification but somewhere along the way, with so many different things going on, their focus on search has diluted. Whether it's right at the top with Eric, Larry and Sergey or down the line through the many thousands of Google employees, it's happening.

I believe this dilution of absolute focus on search has resulted in some deterioration (or perhaps not as much improvement) of the search results. It's time to put the focus back on search, or the current batch of search engines may become the HotBot and AltaVista of the past.

Maybe search results have gotten better and we are just expecting too much, however I don't think this is the case; many people with in the search industry have noticed this and questioned the big wigs about it. I think that there are alot of outside factors that might be negatively affecting the SERPS, but I think it's time the search engines took cognisance of these factors and tried to counter them instead of putting feature upon feature (real-time search, more blended results, caffeine update etc) upon pretty average search results that are already crying out for some better quality control and more relevant sites within those SERPS.

My 2009 online project

2010-01-06T23:15:25Z

Photo by Titanas via Creative Commons

Happy New Year to all. I hope your festive season and New Year parties were just grand. It looks like it's going to be an interesting year, what with the launch of the first Google (slightly HTCish phone), Facebook challenging Google for Internet dominance, and MicroYahoo challenging Google for search engine dominance. I'm not going to touch on any of these subjects, not now anyway, but they will be covered in good time.

Bruce Clay Australia has always fostered an entrepreneurial atmosphere within the office, offering ideas, support and encouragement for any semi-feasible web idea. Luckily enough towards the backend of last year, I stumbled upon such an idea. Now this isn't my first rodeo, I have built websites from scratch using good ol notepad, and (gasp) Microsoft FrontPage when I was just starting out. However this was my first experience using Wordpress as a CMS and not just a blogging platform. I have recently completed my project (no shameless link plugging here) and what follows are some interesting things I have learnt about the Internet, SEO and myself:

1. Expensive Wordpress themes are not always what they appear. I decided to use Wordpress for my project because it was going to be relatively static (aside from the blog section), and I am pretty familiar with Wordpress and if I wanted to do something, there would probably be a plugin for that. So I went about creating my Wordpress design. After about 3 days worth of work (with barely anything to show for it) I decided to leave it to the experts and went shopping for a theme. Awesome, after just a short while I found a theme that would suit my project perfectly, bought it immediately and set it up on my Wordpress installation. But wait, this doesn't seem right I thought as I stared at the screen that looked distinctly different to the demo of the theme I had just bought. It took many, many many, MANY hours of work for my theme to look anything close to the demo. In the end, it worked out as I got my theme looking just the way I wanted. But a word of warning to those of you about to purchase a Wordpress theme: most of the time the theme you buy isn't going to look like the demo you saw, so allow yourself a fair bit of time to get your theme right.

2. Double check your site is accessible. Now my site was finally finished, I had tweaked, proofread, optimised title tags etc, and I was finally ready to go live. I took off the disallow command in my robots.txt file and thought I was ready to roll. A day later, I feverishly checked my Webmaster tools and some accessibility tools and, to my surprise, my site was still being blocked to search engine spiders. So I started delving through Wordpress, looking for something I have missed. Sure enough, within the privacy section of Wordpress I found this little button ticked

I changed the setting and thought my job was done but apparently not because a few days later my site was still being blocked. More investigations for Marc. After going through every little link in my whole Wordpress dashboard, I finally found that my theme was blocking robots by default, so I changed that too and all was well with the world (well my website accessibility anyway).So in the end I had to check 3 places to make sure the site was accessible; the Wordpress option, the theme option and the robots.txt .This is a pretty vital step because you're in big trouble if search engines can't find your site. So always check your site is accessible and with Wordpress and themes it may entail you checking alot of areas around your Wordpress dashboard.

3. The All in One SEO Plugin rocks. I have always been sceptical of tools that claim to completely automate the search engine optimisation process as I have seen loads of these not come close to what a person can do. However, I had heard good things about this plugin so decided to give it a bash. Besides the fact that it also messed slightly with accessibility of my blog, it makes things alot easier from an SEO point of view. There are loads of features but the ones that made it useful for me were:

• Automatically optimises your titles for search engines and does a fairly good job of this

• Generates META tags automatically, especially great with the keyword tag as I know it's not relevant anymore but I have an almost sentimental need from the old days to always put these in

• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs, so you can very easily
i. Use noindex for Categories:
ii. Use noindex for Archives:
iii. Use noindex for Tag Archives

It doesn't automate everything but it does lend a helping hand.

4. The truth is out there (spoken to the background of the X-Files theme tune). So I ran into a problem that I just couldn't get right myself. You see, Wordpress has a nasty habit of placing the word 'category' or some category that you have chosen in the URL. Now I didn't want that, I really didn't want that. I wanted the name of my blog to be as close to my domain name in the URL as it can possibly be. So I typed "wordpress get rid of categories" into Google and voila, there must have been hundreds of articles and forum entries on the subject and plenty of walkthroughs to help me achieve this. Granted the first 5 little hints and hacks didn't really work but 6th time lucky I guess. The point I am trying to make is that Wordpress is so popular and has such a large community out there, that any problem or query you have, is likely to have been asked and answered before and you can use that solution to fix your problem.

5. Get another set of eyes. I spend most of my time on the content creation side of SEO. It seemed only natural that I should design a project with content as its focal point. So I wrote an ebook :) Now after months of creating, proofing and editing my ebook, I was quietly confident that there would be zero errors, typos and spelling mistakes. Just in case, I decided to get a few people I knew who had an eye for detail to give it the quick once over. My quiet confidence was a little unfounded: there were spelling errors, typos, etc. Now I am normally pretty good at that side of things but I think with this project I was a little too close to the content (almost knowing it by heart) and that inhibited my ability to be objective about it. It's cases like these where you need another set of eyes, just to make sure everything is ok.

It really was a learning process for me and being my own client also gave me an insight into what it's like to be a client and work with an SEO company. It's not always easy! I think that I have learnt a tremendous amount and with my future content creation, link building and social media optimisation, I doubt that the learning will stop anytime soon.

I just wanted to wish the readers of the blog a happy, prosperous and healthy 2010. I think it's going to be a good one.

Marc's special SEO Christmas wish list

2009-12-23T22:13:53Z

Photo by ercwttmn via Creative Commons

Well the silly season is upon us, the year is winding down with all matter of festivities (the Bruce Clay Christmas party was most enjoyable) taking place. Having decided to go the Christmas shopping online route and not run the gauntlet shopping with the heavy crowds, I have become pretty adept at making wish lists. So to end off a very successful year of the Bruce Clay Blog, I give you Marc's very special SEO Christmas wish list:

1. Please clean up your results Google: The other day I was doing some searches for a fairly generic name, which also happened to be a celebrity, all of a sudden I had SERPS that looked like a taxi dashboard, there were videos, pictures, real-time results and PPC results, oh and a small smattering of regular organic results. If Google is using click behaviour to implement personalised search, then surely they can observe I hardly ever click through to videos and images in my results and provide more organic results and less of the 'fluff'? Next time I have a purely information query perhaps Wikipedia will be my first choice.

2. Matt Cutts: Not just Matt Cutts mind you, but Matt in full Santa regalia sliding down the chimney and asking for me to come away with him on his sled (eco friendly of course) to the Googleplex in Mountain View to personally review the algorithm and give my very valuable insight. This is only slightly less likely than me being asked to play professional soccer for Tottenham Hotspurs, but a guy can dream can't he.

3. Don't kill the Yahoo link command: Since Google stopped supporting the link command and Microsoft never really did, there has only been one (excluding pricey programs, many of which rely on the Yahoo link command anyway) real tool for SEO newcomers to conduct competitive link analysis, the Yahoo site/link command. With the 'sale' of Yahoo to Microsoft, there air has been thick with rumours that the Yahoo link command may also stop working, please let it live, purty please!

4. A better way to leverage Twitter: Currently the real-time results for the search engines aren't that great, I find them annoying and don't see them as adding value. Lisa Barone has also shown how spammy real-time search can be. I think that, if leveraged correctly, real-time search results can be great, but I think in a rush to outdo each other, the search engines jumped the gun on this one.

5. A Eureka moment: Not really the kind that Archimedes had in his bathtub but really a kind of singularity moment where everybody in the world suddenly has an epiphany and all of a sudden knows exactly what search engine optimisation is. Im a little bit tired of friends and family asking me what I do and when I reply SEO, I'm generally met with a blank stare in return. If in the extremely unlikely scenario that this singularity doesn't occur, perhaps some better worldwide publicity and education regarding SEO would be great.

6. SEO Report: Not just any report mind you, but a fully automated tool that creates client specific, customised rankings, traffic and SEO KPI reports that provide intelligent, actionable insights for both Bruce Clay and our clients all at the click of a button, first time, every time. I dont think there's an app for that.

7. Make Google Analytics real-time: There is a lag in reporting statics within GA of about 3 hours between the event occurring and GA reporting on it. If Google can implement real-time search, surely they can get real time reporting right too. Oh and while we are on Google Analytics, the ability to transfer ownership of profiles between accounts would be greatly appreciated.

8. Make it easier to report spam: Currently you have to log into your webmaster account to report any kind of spam, this makes it an inconvenient and long process, if there was an easier way to do this, (say putting a 'report spam button' next to the SERPS whilst logged into your account) more people would report spammy sites and the search engines indexes would be alot cleaner.

9. Better competition for Google: It is said competition drives innovation and for a while (in search anyway) Google has had no real competitors; they had 65.6% of the search market share in November. I am hoping that Bing will soon integrate all the Yahoo search technology and this jump-starts a search engine conflict that will drive up quality control, features, relevancy, useful features and value add to both Google and Bing.

10. Charlize Theron's phone number: It's for SEO I swear, just wanted to let her know that her website should have unique title tags for each page and that she should have a robots.txt and sitemap.xml file :)

Hope you enjoyed my wish list (was just kidding Charlize, but seriously my email is on the blog :)). The Bruce Clay Australia office is closing tomorrow until Monday the 4th of January. From all the folks at Bruce Clay, have a great festival season and a grand New Years. See you on the other side.

Marc

Google Search Updates

2009-12-10T02:15:59Z

Photo by dannysullivan via Creative Commons

Over the past week or so Google has released a slew of updates to its search operation. Some of these are somewhat controversial (personalised search) and some are just aesthetic changes (minimalist homepage) but Google seems to have ramped up their refinement process for the coming festive season. Here are just some of the new updates.

Google Personalised Search

From around the beginning of December, Google will start tailoring your search results based on previous browsing history, whether you are logged into your Google account or not(This review assumes that you are logged out). In order to allay privacy concerns you can opt out if you wish but most people using Google will be using personalised search by default. Google accomplishes this finding your favoured sites (indicated by which ones you most often click through to) and ranking sites from that brand or theme higher in your particular search results. This means Dymocks might be top of the SER's for the keyword 'books' while for another person the same search will yield Angus & Robertson as the top positioned site. This doesn't mean the other ranking factors are simply ignored however; they are simply used in conjunction with the personalised result factors. With this version of personalised search ( signed out of Google account), Google can only guess at your preference from what you click on, clicks are what your personalised search is based on, not search history or surfing habits.

Now you may think this has doom and gloom implications for search engine optimisation, well it doesn't, not yet anyway. First, Google is going to have to collect huge amounts of click data in order to understand and use your preferences within the SERPS. Good structured pages with terrific content, correctly used HTML attributes and links will still play the majority role in the ranking of sites, whether personalised search takes effect or not. We're not sure how much weighting the personalised search factor will have within the entire Google algorithm, but I wouldn't be surprised if people get near identical SERPS, regardless of their click history and habits. I have a feeling they may use the old Google 80/20 rule when implementing personalised search, i.e. 8 'normal results' and 2 results impacted on by personalised search for each SERP.

Google's New Search Page

Now unlike some of the other tweaks and updates that Google has implemented over the past month or so this is pretty much a purely aesthetic change. When the search page is first loaded, you only see the logo, search box and the search buttons. When you move your mouse the rest of the search page 'fades in'. This is something that Google has been testing for a while, for example it only worked on Chrome for a while and then periodically for other browsers. The only reason I can think of for this change is to funnel more people to start searching right away, rather than exploring the other links on the page.

Google Real-Time results

Google also announced that Google Real Time search has been rolled out. This feature is going to be rolled out in an incremental process over the next few weeks. Essentially Google is going to start indexing tweets, Facebook status updates (where made publicly visible by the Facebook user and this feature will be rolled out at a later stage) and other forms of real-time information. According to Google, they are processing over 'a billion documents a day' from the real-time web. In order to activate this feature you need to click on the show options link just above the results. This opens a whole heap of options, in order to activate the Google real-time results click on latest link. Then just sit back and watch new results blend into the top of your SERPS. Below is an example of my search for Obama, note the time next to each result.

Now with the advent of Twitter, 'real-time' seems to be all the rage, with everybody wanting instant gratification. I think the problem Google and the other search engines may be at the juxtaposition of real-time and relevancy. How do you rank a tweet in terms of relevancy to the subject? Is something that is 'real-time' better than something that is more relevant? Well, I don't have answers to these questions but with a couple thousand PHD's just sitting around thinking up answers to these questions im sure the big G has it covered. The following sources of real-time information will be indexed:

Facebook
MySpace
FriendFeed
Jaiku
Identi.ca
Twitter
Fresh press releases or blog posts

Was this feature an absolute necessity for Google to survive? No, but it's a 'nice to have' feature, as for me, it's easier to keep up with my UEFA champions league scores.

Google Mobile Updates

Google announced a whole raft of search capabilities for mobile phones (and in particular android enabled phones). In terms of Google Voice search, Japanese, Mandarin and English are all now supported as well as several more phone models, including; Blackberries, Android powered mobiles and Nokia's.

Search By location is a really interesting feature. According to the Google announcement, people with Google Maps on Android 1.6+ devices, can just press on the map for an extended period and ten of the closest points of interest (restaurants, shops etc) will be revealed to you. Nice feature, especially if you are bored and stuck somewhere for an extended period.

Google Goggles

Now this is a feature that really interests me, If Google can pull it off correctly it is going to be massive! This feature is currently a labs product that only users of Android 1.6+ devices can use. Essentially, you take a picture of an object, send it to Google and if they are able to recognise the object it returns relevant search results regarding the object.

According to Google, Goggles will recognise the following objects:

• Books
• DVDs
• Landmarks
• Logos
• Artwork
• Businesses
• Products
• Barcodes

Google has also released the following tips for making Goggles work better:

• Take photos in areas with good lighting.
• Zoom in as much as possible.
• Use your phone in "left landscape" orientation (with your right thumb pressing the shutter).
• Hold your hands steady, and use the on-screen shutter button.

Imagine the capabilities, you are in a foreign country, you are doing the
touristy/sightseeing thing, you want more information on an odd relic you are perusing so you take a picture and voila, all the information right on your mobile, very cool.

There are some other features like Google living stories, news rendered in a new and dynamic way. Updates to the Google Web Kit, including ways to speed up web apps. Loading time/web site performance is slated to be a big indicator in terms of search results in 2010. Martin has written a great post on Google and speed. As a result of the speed factor, Google has added another tool in Google Webmaster Tools where you can check the performance of your site. Google has also announced that extensions for Chrome are also now available. Wow, Google has been busy and I for one am looking forward to playing around with these news features and figuring out how they benefit me and the SEO I perform.

SEO is so Postmodern

2009-12-04T01:51:39Z

Photo by tew via Creative Commons

Oh, people love throwing this label around. Being called Postmodern is totally zeitgeist and will definitely increase your buzz on the street. It's worked for architecture, business, novels, music, the arts, even specific human beings. You're just not modern unless you're Postmodern. Therefore, for a bit of Friday fun, I've ventured into theoretical territory to see if SEO (the Bruce Clay way) can proudly wear the postmodern jacket.

Postmodernism and Search Engine Optimisation are young in terms of their respective fields. No one is sure what either one really is, both have this mysterious appeal. You may feel you know what they are, but you'll never be entirely sure. Moreover, as is the nature of them both, once you stop to reflect, you've fallen behind.

Both have a shady past. The Postmodernism grew out of the Modernist movement, which it thought of as an overprotective parent. Whereas SEO has it's black sheep of the family (or is that hat).

However, to find any real similarities, you'll need to look at the core of SEO, optimising websites. The first ranking goal of any website is to become equal among the ranking leaders, which means finding the best keywords for your target market and recording the finer details of the sites leading those rankings. This gives you an idea on how to match the highest ranked sites. Once the site is equal with the best, the design can then develop into a unique style.

Similarly, the Postmodernist examines the nuances of conventions. The conventions (the ways others are doing things) need to be learnt, experienced and aced. Only then can they create a unique style, something that sees through the conventions and challenges them to change.

SEO and PM emphasize the little things, taking time working through the nuances. Get prepared to hear lots of 'nothing to report today'. However, if you've done things correctly, it'll eventually come together.

Both take an unusual approach to spoken truths. PM is renowned for its mistrust of theories. They would rather experience and come to their own conclusions, living and dying by their own sword. SEOs on the other hand, as a colleague of mine stated, are better rewarded for taking a 'do as we do not as we say' approach to search engines. SEOs have learnt over the years that search engines can intentionally set you off on the wrong path. The answer is to look for the finer details and understand their own language, commonly referred to as Googlespeak.

I think the similarities between to two are the result of something inherent in them both. Both are a never-ending process. PM doesn't believe in finishing. In addition, technically SEO does have a definitive end, the algorithm; our goal is to be lest imperfect. What 'imperfect' is however, is what we dont know.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Comment Spam

2009-12-03T02:05:03Z

Photo by dok1 via Creative Commons

Being an avid link builder myself, I get frustrated by the hundreds of spam emails from people offering "Great Link Building Services" and finding out their methods include "commenting on dofollow" blogs.

Not that I read any of these emails, as 99% of them use the same software and 100% of the time they end up in my spam folder :)

The thing that has concerned me for a long time, and something that still makes no sense to me is the fact that webmasters of websites often hire these "link profile destroyers" to build a large quantity of links in an attempt to gain higher rankings. The only way to get a large quantity of these links is by spamming comment fields on blogs. Why? Because 99% of all blogs allow users (sometimes even anonymously) to comment and leave, their name and website address behind.

As you can see, this becomes very tempting to make a quick comment and leave your link without too much effort. As a result, many comments on blog posts are ridiculous (For examples check out Marc's rant about spam )or are generic no-value adding comments like "Thanks" or "Great post".

According to Google,

"..You are tarnishing other people's hard work and lowering the quality of the web, transforming a potentially good resource of additional information into a list of nonsense keywords."

I could not agree more, especially in the SEO industry where we often create blog posts for which we want to rank (or at least try to). When your perfectly crafted blog post is picked up by Google, and you start ranking for the keywords (isn't it a great feeling!) you know you did a great job.
Waking up the next morning to see your post suddenly having vanished from the index because these self-proclaimed link builders have polluted your comment section with so many spammy comments that now your most prominent keyword on the page is "Cheap Viagra".

Google has finally announced that they are able to determine the links that come from spam commenting and de-value these. In fact, you could possibly harm the quality of not just the site you are commenting on but also your own site.

Now, I see this as potentially opening the flood gates for people to see this as a measure of lowering the quality of their competitor's blogs/websites. Therefore, Google has come up with a couple of ways you could avoid this from happening.

You could:

• Disallow anonymous posting (People can still leave false information on your website, but at least it's better as the name of the poster appearing as "anonymous")

• Implement CAPTCHA checking when making comments

• Turn on comment moderation (So when someone comments on your blog, it has to go through an approval process)

• Use the "nofollow" attribute on links in the comment section

• Disallow link dropping in your comments

• Block comment pages out using your robots.txt or meta tags

Now, whenever you get another spammy comment on your precious blog, before you delete it, think about the person sitting behind his computer trying to come up with more ways to comment on as many blogs as possible and think about what a big waste of time it is... It is something that should bring a smirk to your face; I know it does for me!

Brand bidding strategies in search engine marketing

2009-11-30T04:34:32Z

It is obvious the importance of SEO and PPC advertising strategies to brand marketers, however to what extent should these strategies be implemented together for branding queries? It is quite usual to find corporations bidding on brand terms while at the same time running a PPC campaign, mainly because brand terms usually drive quite a large amount of traffic at a low cost per click (CPC). It has been proved that being in both top sponsored and top organic positions for brand queries can lift the site traffic, however it can also cause traffic cannibalization. Should marketers bid on brand terms when a website is already appearing in top of the ranking in Google organic search results?

Brand bidding tips

Below are few tips why you should or shouldn't bid on brands terms.

Generally it is not recommended bidding on brand terms when:

1. Your website is ranking number 1, your brand is trademarked in Google (therefore no one can bid on it) and you are the only one in the sponsored listing

2. Your paid search ads are similar to your organic search results therefore there is no added value to it

3. Your website is ranking number 1 for search queries that include a variation of your brand name and you are the only one in the sponsored listing

4. Your website is ranking number one and only results not related to your brand are coming up in the sponsored search for search query - if users are searching for your brand, users are most unlikely to click to an unrelated ad

Generally it is recommended bidding on brand terms when:

1. You are not ranking number one for brand terms (and generic terms)

2. There are several results and businesses associated with your brand name

3. You are on top of the organic search results, however you want to push users when looking for your brand to a special product/offer page

4. You own different sites for the same brand and you need to differentiate

5. You want to test different promotions

Recommendations

Make sure your brand is trademarked in Google, (you can submit your request directly to Google) to stop advertisers appearing against your brand. Test the impact of pausing PPC ads appearing for a brand related search query for a period of time (ideally 4 weeks). Look at conversion data for the same keywords from paid and organic and run a cost vs. revenue comparison.

Conclusions

Bidding on brand terms really depends on the industry you are in and how competitive it is. You should evaluate the ROI for these terms and test how much traffic you are getting from your organic search results when paid ads are paused. Even if the CPC for brand terms can be very small, the overall cost can become quite considerable for large brand that can drive a large amount of clicks. Don't waste your money for traffic that you will get anyway, especially if you have budget restrictions.